Out of Time

Ants

Mitch and Chloe run out of the way of the truck driving down the runaway before the truck drives onto the plane. When it does I hit the door lift and close the cargo door and the plane flies off into the sky. When the group gets settled into the lab for Mitch and I to make sure no one is hurt, as one would do after being chased by a mad elephant. "So what happened?" I look up to Abe after checking his breathing and everything needed.

"Vultures where stockpiling bodies. There were bodies everywhere. Stacked like firewood. Never before have I seen a wake this large descend from above the clouds."

"What were they doing up there?"

"I think they were responsible for the blood rain that drove the villagers away."

"How is that possible?" I look over to Mitch.

Mitch sighs and nods, "as much as I hate to admit it, he's right. I ran some tests on the rain while I was waiting for the results on that, uh, elephant blood you brought back."

"So the vultures are responsible for the rain?"

"This blood rain is highly acidic and the protein structure matches the corrosive bile that vultures have in their digestive tract."

"How did the bile get into the rain?"

"The vultures feed, they fly above the cloud cover. And that high up, they can seed the clouds with acidic bile."

"But they were stockpiling human bodies. So you're saying that red color, it's blood. Human blood." I look over to Mitch, who simply nods his head, "so not only did they feed on the villagers, but they poisoned their water supply, destroyed their crops."

"This is a whole new level of aberrant aggressive behavior."

Jackson sighs, "well, how about the elephant blood that I brought back?"

"Unremarkable. We've seen plenty of animals with the same mutation, right? If there was something special about the elephant, I could attribute that mutation transfer to that, but it's not about the elephant. It's about the man."

"So you're saying that there's something specific about Kovacs' genetic makeup that made it possible for the mutation to occur in him."

"Yeah, that's what it looks like. Now, I think it's gonna take a little time to figure out what that is exactly."

"Fine. Then run more tests. We have him, we have a chance." I nod, "we can study him and maybe learn how to reverse it."

Dariela, the Army Ranger, walks into the lab, rather upset, "you let that thing loose again?"

Abe sighs, "Dariela, now is not the time."

"Instead of putting it down, you let it loose again.

"I'm sorry about your friends, but they died in the line of duty. And right now, there's only one person that matters," I point back to Kovacs, "Janos Kovacs."

"Stop saying that. That's not him."

"Yes, it is. He's still in there!"

"No, he's not," with that Dariela walks over to Kovacs and shoots him, three times, in the head. The group rushes to stop her when she pulls out her gun, but we're too late. I take a deep breath and try my best not to see red.

The group goes silent as Mitch rushes in to check Kovacs, "he's dead."

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" I shout at her.

"What were you thinking, huh? Who are you, anyway?" Mitch walks over behind me.

"You never should've brought that... monster on this plane," Dariela shouts back to Mitch.