Extinction Read online

  It had happened late last year, the same old clichéd story heard a million times before, except this time it had happened to her: she had come home from work early one afternoon to find Adam – her beloved, the man whom she had hoped to one day marry – in bed with another woman. In their bed – an even worse betrayal. It was where they had discussed their hopes, their dreams, their ideas of what living a life together would be like; it was where Joyce had told him the little things, the secret things which made a person unique, and which she had shared with no one else.

  And the woman wasn’t even just another woman, it was Georgina Wilcock; maybe not her best friend, but a friend nevertheless. How could a friend do that? Joyce supposed she should have known – she’d seen Georgina do the same to other women’s boyfriends, even other women’s husbands, but she had never suspected it would happen to her. Stupid. You couldn’t trust men, and it turned out you couldn’t trust women either.

  But, she repeated to herself as Sebastian trotted along obediently at her side, you could trust dogs. You could always trust dogs. Cats were nice too, she thought, but not like dogs. She had always agreed with the idea that there were dog people and cat people. You could like both, sure, but not equally – you had to decide one way or the other which you preferred, and she was definitely a dog person.

  She had lived with dogs all her life – her parents were dog people too – and had even found a way to smuggle Francis, her pet from the age of six, into her college dorms for the whole three years she was there; she just couldn’t live without dogs.

  She had had others over the years, often fostering dogs for animal shelters before they found permanent homes, and the stories of their lives more often than not reduced her to tears. How could people be so cruel? It never ceased to amaze her. Malnutrition and neglect were the least of the dogs’ problems – some had been forced into fights, resulting in horrific wounds, another had been set on fire for making too much noise during the night, one more had had all her teeth pulled out with pliers for chewing the leg of a kitchen chair.

  But with Sebastian, it was a clean slate. She had always loved the breed, long and sleek but well-muscled, a ridge of hair rising along the length of its back giving it a unique look. And some of the things it was bred to hunt! But Sebastian was a pure pet dog, bred for health and appearance, and Joyce felt herself admiring his perfect form, his long, easy gait, the way he carried his large, heavy head proudly, chest out, chin up.

  Being a pedigree – descended from champions, no less – he hadn’t been cheap. But she had always wanted one, she earned good money, and the opportunity was there – why not take it? And so she had paid her five hundred deposit – the balance of fifteen hundred would be paid when a new litter was born and she had made her selection – and put her name on the waiting list.

  She had never regretted the decision once, and it made her feel good to walk with him through the city streets, as she felt eyes turning towards them, admiring Sebastian; and in that admiration she felt mutual acclaim, the fact that she was with him making her someone to be admired – look at how that lady walks that beautiful dog, people would say, she must really have something about her.

  And that was how she felt that morning, a deep glow of satisfaction within her, making up for all the other problems in her life. She would walk down the street, across the junction and then into the park, where Sebastian would have a good half-hour runaround, and Joyce Greenfield felt good. Sure, she worked long hours and hadn’t had a proper relationship since Adam, but with the sky blue and full of promise, and Sebastian at her side, her worries faded into the background.

  She first felt the difference as they waited to cross the road to the park. Sebastian would normally wait patiently by her side, in a perfect ‘sit’ position, but this morning he seemed agitated by something. He started to fidget as they waited for the lights to change, then stood up and pulled forward, yanking her arm.

  Surprised, she nevertheless managed to rein him back in; and then the lights changed and they crossed for the park, although Sebastian kept on pulling her. What was wrong with him? Could he smell something? she wondered. Maybe a girl doggy over in the park? She’d been meaning to have him ‘done’ for a couple of years now – after all, it was supposed to help prevent serious disease and all sort of other things – but she still thought she might breed from him one day and so had never made the appointment.

  Sebastian calmed as they entered the park, and she momentarily forgot about it as they walked down the tree-lined paths towards the playing fields where she would throw the ball for him.

  But then she noticed that other people walking their dogs were being jerked along by their agitated canines. As she started to pay more attention, it seemed everyone was having some problems with their dogs.

  And then Sebastian pulled her again, harder this time, and she fought to correct him, but he fought back and pulled her forwards, faster and faster, towards the playing fields, and now she had no control, she was just being pulled along behind him, stumbling over herself in an effort to keep up. What the hell had gotten into him?

  They were in the playing fields just moments later, and Sebastian paused, tense, as if sensing something beyond Joyce’s comprehension.

  Her head snapped round at the screams that broke out seconds later, and she saw the huge dog just two hundred yards away with its jaws wrapped round its owner’s arm, blood gushing.

  Over to the other side, a pair of old ladies screamed as their little toy dogs began to snap and bite at their heels, continuing their attack as the women fell to the ground, claws and teeth going for their faces with savage ferocity.

  Everywhere she looked, dogs were attacking their owners, biting legs, arms, faces, necks. The green grass of the fields was stained red with fresh blood everywhere she looked.

  And then Sebastian turned towards her, lips pulled back in a feral snarl. No, surely not her own dog as well, surely not Sebastian, her faithful companion?

  But in the blink of an eye Sebastian launched himself at Joyce, forcing her to the ground. She cried out as in a frenzy his claws and teeth ripped her to pieces.

  3

  HANS GLAUBER LOOKED out of the little window of the huge aircraft and stifled a yawn. Four hours already, and only halfway there.

  He loved his job as head of international sales for a distinguished yacht firm, but the travel could be a real killer, hopping from one continent to the next, sometimes more than four times in a single week. He’d grown accustomed to it now of course but it hardly made it any easier.

  He’d arrive at his hotel at about eight in the morning and, although the temptation would be to simply crash out and get some sleep, he knew the best thing to do would be to follow his daily routine and go to bed that night at the normal time. His body would adjust to the time difference naturally this way, and he’d be absolutely fine by the following morning, which was when the big meeting was scheduled for.

  ‘What’s that?’ he heard himself ask, almost without realizing.

  The middle-aged lady in the seat next to him leant across to have a look. ‘What’s what?’ she asked.

  Glauber wasn’t sure. He peered out of the window, looking harder.

  ‘There!’ he exclaimed, prodding at the glass with a pudgy finger.

  The woman looked in the direction of Glauber’s finger, towards the front of the aircraft. There was movement in the sky ahead but she couldn’t make out what it was.

  Glauber stared. It looked like lots and lots of tiny specks criss-crossing the sky, a long way away. Like grains of sand, moving independently of one another, coming together in small groups, then separating again. How many were there? A thousand? A million?

  ‘Are they birds?’ the lady asked him, and he realized she was right; they were birds, circling the sky maybe dozens of miles away, vast numbers of birds, swarming together, separating, and then swarming again.

  But why?

  In the cockpit, Flight Navigator Lao Che Huan
turned to the pilot, Hoa Man. ‘They’re on the radar now,’ he announced, voice calm and professional. ‘They must be converging.’

  Huan and Man had been observing the birds for some time; they were following the same course as the airplane. At first the men had had no idea what the specks in the distance were, but after a while it became clear that they were birds. But they behaved in a way neither man had seen before, flying apart and then coming together in larger groups. And now it seemed that they had formed one enormous supergroup.

  ‘How large?’ Man asked.

  ‘I’ve got no idea,’ Huan said, now struggling to contain himself. ‘There must be millions of them.’

  ‘But they’re still some way ahead of us,’ Man said hopefully.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Huan answered immediately. ‘They’re about twelve . . . Oh no,’ he gasped.

  ‘What?’ Man questioned.

  Huan swallowed hard. ‘They’re turning.’

  In the cabin, Glauber felt the woman beside him shudder. He’d seen it too, the birds coming together into one huge group, bigger than anything he’d thought possible.

  And it wasn’t just Glauber and the woman – other passengers had also noticed now. There was a collective gasp as the birds all came together, and then there were cries of alarm when the birds turned, and started flying towards the aircraft.

  The pilot and navigator tensed as the flock swooped and turned, until it was flying directly towards them, less than a mile away now.

  Hoa Man tried to take evasive action, but the birds turned with him, getting closer, ever closer, until they were all he could see, all that anyone could see; the cockpit window was filled with the birds, coming relentlessly towards them, a huge black cloud of birds that seemed to fill the whole sky.

  Glauber watched as the birds soared towards the aircraft. The woman next to him gripped his arm reflexively, her fingers tight with anxiety.

  The birds swarmed from all sides, all over the aircraft, and the plane lurched up and down as if hitting turbulence. Glauber heard the woman next to him scream, heard others scream all through the cabin; and then the birds were gone, the sky outside clear once more.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ the woman asked breathlessly. ‘What do they want?’

  Glauber’s brow furrowed, as he searched the sky for the birds. What do they want? He had never considered the idea. What do animals want? Food, shelter, to reproduce; Glauber knew that, as far as an animal could want anything, it wanted to survive. But how was this behaviour accomplishing anything? Flying towards the plane in a group of thousands, maybe millions, then breaking away and flying off? It seemed that the purpose was merely to frighten the people in the aircraft, but that was clearly ridiculous. Why would any animal want to do that?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.

  There were cries from around the cabin – There! – Over on the right! – There they are! – and Glauber saw them again, circling in smaller groups, swarming and then breaking away as they had before. But he realized moments later that this was another group entirely. Surely it must be. The aircraft would be travelling at well over five hundred miles per hour, an impossible speed for birds to keep pace with.

  This realization filled him with even greater horror. It was as if nature was rebelling. It seemed utterly impossible for there to be another group of these birds; but there they were, as before, coalescing into a huge, living, pulsating mass.

  ‘They’re coming again,’ Flight Navigator Huan said, his voice urgent, panic creeping in. Their flight training was rigorous – what to do in case of mechanical malfunction, terrorist attack, even how to keep control in the face of a hurricane – but nothing had prepared him for this.

  ‘A different flock,’ Man said, his tone uneven, disbelieving.

  Huan nodded his head; he could see the two separate groups on his radar system, the first group left far behind. Two separate groups of birds, both acting in a way which seemed to contradict the very laws of nature. What did it mean?

  But then this group of birds was on them also, and he heard Man grunting with the effort of keeping the plane stable as it was rocked up and down, side to side, by the army – for that was surely the word for it – of winged creatures, no longer the benign little angels that Huan had once believed them to be, but savage beasts, cruel and vindictive.

  The plane was rocked harder this time, for longer, but the army finally passed again, flying away to swarm and regroup. Huan breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Damage report?’ Man demanded, doing his best to retain his professionalism, although the sweat that dripped down his face revealed the pressure he was under.

  Huan’s keen eyes swept the instruments, trying to identify any irregularities – altitude, oil pressure, fuel, engine temperature, bearing, rudder adjustment – but miraculously everything was still fine, all as it should be.

  ‘Nothing,’ he reported, regaining some of his own composure.

  Glauber wasn’t sure which was more frightening – the third group of birds, massing again in their millions underneath the dark, ominous clouds, creating a huge, even more menacing cloud of their own – or the scene inside the aircraft, where fear and panic were starting to take hold.

  Some people merely stared out of the tiny windows in open-mouthed disbelief, whilst others screamed, screams of a sort that Glauber had never before heard in his life – screams of pure terror. Children sobbed gently or cried hysterically; actually, not just the children, Glauber realized, but men and women too. Most people who weren’t screaming were crying.

  Others, however, were more active. Some were hammering on the cockpit door, demanding answers from the flight crew, and Glauber was disgusted as he saw a big, bearded man grab a stewardess by the front of her dress and slam her into the toilet door, yelling in her face. He was tackled to the floor by other passengers.

  Another man had begun to talk loudly, preaching to the passengers – this is it, it’s finally time, better repent now, Judgement Day has come, it’s the time of the Apocalypse.

  Further along, one family was taking down their luggage from the overhead racks, almost as if they expected to be getting off the plane at any moment, forgetting they were still thirty-eight thousand feet in the air. Shock, Glauber thought.

  Glauber glanced to his side, saw the woman bent with her head between her knees, muttering prayers to herself – actually, Glauber realized, it was the same prayer, repeated over and over and over again. He himself wasn’t in shock. He felt something different. Disbelief perhaps? Disbelief that something like this was happening?

  No. As the third group of birds began to converge on the aircraft, starting their final approach in one huge amorphous mass, moving with seemingly demonic intent, Glauber realized what he felt was acceptance.

  He knew he was going to die.

  In the cockpit, Man was the first to scream, just half a second before Huan.

  The third attack had started the same way as the first two. Anticipating the move, Man had violently turned the aircraft, cutting across the line of attacking birds, avoiding them entirely.

  Man had taken a short breath, allowed himself a brief glimmer of hope, but then he saw the birds ahead had been a decoy. His evasive action had taken his airplane, his crew, and his three hundred and fifty-six passengers directly into the path of another flock, this one even bigger, a fact neither man thought possible but which was undeniable. There must be tens of millions of them, Man thought with a shudder, just before they reached the plane.

  The first line of birds hit the cockpit window, bodies breaking across the glass, bones, feathers and blood smeared and splattered everywhere. Then the next wave hit, then the next, wave after wave after wave of broken and smashed bodies, until the window started to break, to cave inwards.

  Huan, despite his fear and panic, still managed to notice the warning lights go on for the engines, first one, then two, then three, then four, until all engines were out, and his mind was still able to pro
cess the fact that the birds had flown straight into the huge, churning jet engines, sacrificing themselves to destroy the aircraft, just as the birds were doing against the windscreen in front of him. He noticed the altitude start to drop, saw how cabin pressure was being lost in the main passenger area, realized that the birds must have broken through the cabin windows.

  And then the reinforced glass of the cockpit finally gave way, and Huan’s screams were forever silenced by a crushing mass of feathers, blood and bone.

  Glauber could now hear nothing – not the prayers of the woman next to him, nor the cries of the children, nor the screams of everyone else.

  Vision was his only sense, and he looked on in mute amazement as the birds flew into the jet engines mounted on the wings, hundreds upon hundreds, until the engines blew, flames and charred feathers bursting across the sky. But still the birds didn’t stop, and Glauber watched with an almost fascinated terror – not even feeling the drop in altitude, the ferocious rocking of the plane’s fuselage – as the broiling, seething mass succeeded in ripping the entire wing off, sending it spinning away across the sky in an almost balletic display.

  Glauber was still watching the wing spiralling down to earth when the first of the birds smashed through into the cabin, the pressure reducing, anything unsecured – luggage, food, drink, magazines, bodies – being sucked out by the vacuum. But then more birds entered, and nothing else could be sucked out, and Glauber felt the entire aircraft start to spin and understood that the other engines were lost, maybe the entire wing too.

  His attention was now focused inside the aircraft, and he saw, through the incredible shaking and spinning of the fuselage interior, how the passengers were entirely covered in birds, little broken bodies smeared over people’s features, and he couldn’t recognize anyone any more, there were just hundreds of people covered in bird – terrible, bloody, greasy, broken bird.