Part I:

The Haunting

Prologue

She shivered from where she lay curled up in a ball on the red earthen floor, her arms wrapped around her up drawn knees, her eyes unblinking. She was cold, hungry, and broken—at last broken.

       Just as he had planned. Just as he had always wanted.

       He kept her in a cage, naked and half-starving, like a neglected animal in a zoo. Every day her will to resist him grew weaker and weaker. Every day the hunger gnawed at her belly until the pangs felt like sharp talons clawing at her gut.

       She was weak. So fucking weak. She needed nourishment—food and water. Oh God, how she fantasized about water trickling down her dry, parched throat…

       She would never be given water unless she did what he wanted.

       No, she thought in horror. How can I let that…that…thing touch me? How can I—

       “I would have your answer,” he purred.

       She closed her eyes against the sound of his voice. She was so frail that not even her hearing worked as acutely as it once did, for she hadn’t realized until he’d spoken that he’d approached the cage. She could feel his devil’s-eyes on her, though, just like always. Coiled up in a ball with her back to him, she still knew the precise moment when his eerie golden gaze flicked to her buttocks…and then onward to the folds of flesh visible between her legs.

       That flesh was what he wanted. That and a whole lot more. He wanted things from her that were so sick and frightening they didn’t bear dwelling on.

       “Answer me,” he hissed, “or I leave you here for another night.”

       By the morning she would be dead. And escape would be a moot point. Her body was so damn weak…

       “Yes,” she whispered. She closed her eyes tighter, feeling ill. “I’ve just consented to being the devil’s whore.”

       His depraved laughter echoed throughout the underground cavern, reverberated against the impenetrable bars of the cage. “Much lower than a whore,” he murmured. “At least a whore is permitted to live through it.”

       She wanted to vomit, could feel bile churning in her belly.

       “Look at me!” he shouted, his voice angry. “You will look at me!”

       Oh no—oh please no.

       She drew her knees up impossibly closer against her breasts. She didn’t want to look at him. Anything but that. Sweet God above, anything but—

       “Look at me!” he bellowed.

       And then he was in the cage, his hideous claws jerking her up from the ground, forcing her to her feet. She wanted to fight him, but she could barely speak or stand, let alone rage against him.

       “Look at me!” he demanded, shaking her. “Open your eyes!”

       No! No! No! Oh God, please don’t make me look at him!

       She’d never been more frightened. Her heart was thumping like a rock against her chest, her breathing sporadic and growing more labored by the second. She was afraid to know what he looked like for she’d seen his kind before. Hideous. Freakish.

       Monsters.

       “I said look at me!”

       Her nostrils flared in challenge as her eyes flew open. Her gaze clashed with serpentine gold-slitted eyes.

       Oh God…

       “Nooooo!” she screamed. “Nooooo!”

       Alex gasped as she bolted upright in bed, her breathing heavy, the sheets soaked with her perspiration. Her eyes darted frantically about as they adjusted to her surroundings—and to the fact that she had been asleep.

       “Just a dream,” she breathed out, her eyes wide. “Just a nightmare.”

       Exhausted, she fell back onto the bed, expelling a breath of air as she did so. Three times in six months she’d entertained bizarre nightmares, though this one had been far more detailed than the others before it.

       She had almost gotten to see what it looked like.

       “What does it matter?” she murmured to the four walls. She sighed, closing her eyes. “It was only a dream.”

Part II:

Descent Into Hell

Chapter 1

       “Houston, the Methuselah has successfully left the Robert Frazier galaxy and is beginning its long awaited return to the Milky Way.”

       Dr. Alexandria Frazier grinned into the microphone. She wondered what Robert would have thought about her naming a galaxy after him. The way she figured it, she had that right. She’d discovered the damn thing after all.

       Robert…she sighed. In earth time he’d been dead for over fifteen hundred years. But only two years had passed aboard the Methuselah, so she still considered herself recently widowed. Her husband lived on in her memories as though he’d made love to her only yesterday…or only two years ago as it were.

       Dr. Robert Frazier’s death during a routine flight to Europa XII, the space station that had been erected on Jupiter’s largest moon, had been as devastating to Alex as it had been unexpected. NASA had short trips like that down to an art form. Finding out that he’d died while taking pressurization readings in the cargo area aboard the spaceship he’d been traveling on had seemed like a cruel joke.

       During a meteor shower—okay. While exploring alien terrain for signs of life—okay. But while taking pressurization readings?

       Alex took comfort in the knowledge that Robert had died instantaneously. He’d died not knowing he was going to die. He never experienced fear, remorse, or any of the other countless emotions someone who knew they were about to meet their maker no doubt experienced. In that way, Robert had been lucky. It was all the comfort Alex had to hold onto, so she’d clung to it fiercely from the first day of her widowhood onward.

       It had been her husband’s untimely death that had spurred Alex into signing up for the mission she was currently completing. NASA had been hard-pressed to find qualified volunteers for the first human journey into deep space, and for good reason. Doing so, after all, meant that the workers aboard ship would never again lay eyes on their homes and on the people from earth they’d once cherished. Those places and loved ones would have been dead for over fifteen hundred years, remembered only by the explorers of the Methuselah and automated personal libraries.

       As a result of that cold reality, mostly those with nothing and no one to lose had ended up going. The prospect of the journey was an exciting one to every scientist at NASA, but in the end most had decided against requesting passage. Alex’s crew, of which she was the captain, consisted of seven human scientists and four almost freethinking droids.

       “The date on earth that we expect to land in Houston, or whatever Houston now is,” Alex intoned into the microphone, her thoughts straying back to the work at hand, “is October 19, 3679 A.D., exactly one thousand five hundred years from the day we left. Today’s date in earth years is August 3, 2701 A.D.” She sighed. “Though you probably won’t receive this message via satellite for another fifty years.”

       Due to advances in technology prior to the Methuselah leaving earth, it had only taken the crew twenty earth years to reach deep space. The spaceship had ventured as deeply into the outer bounds as planned, so far out, in fact, that it would take a full thousand earth years to return. Time and space were a confusing business.

       Alex nestled into the high-backed chair, her thoughts turning to what her crew had managed to accomplish. They’d landed on fourteen different planets in three different solar systems and two different galaxies. The work they had done was important to all humans for they’d discovered habitable planets that earthlings could reasonably colonize should the planet become overpopulated or contaminated—assuming it already hadn’t.

       She toyed with the microphone in her grasp as she absently stared out into the black abyss on the other side of the viewing window before her. Her voice had a reflective, faraway quality to it. “As much as I am loathe to admit to a failure, Houston, I owe Robert a hundred bucks. He was right. Mankind is the most advanced life-form out here. Or, at least, is still the most advanced life-form known to us.”

       She ran a hand through the long blonde curls she usually kept rolled back into a confining bun at the nape of her neck. “We’ve discovered other life, of course, but none so advanced as the Homo Sapien-Sapien. The closest thing we have found to self-aware beings is a race of thinking creatures in Robert Frazier Galaxy. We named the planet Paleo and its race Paleoliths for they brought to mind the sort of primitive thinkers one would have expected to find in the beginning stages of human evolution. I’m sure if NASA were to make a return voyage a few hundred thousand years from now we would find beings on par with us.” She smiled. “Or will they be on par with us? Perhaps humans have continued to evolve as well.”

       Alex’s smile dissolved as she considered the answer to that question. “What kind of a world will the crew of the Methuselah find waiting for us upon our return?” she murmured into the microphone. “It is unlikely, from an evolutionary standpoint, that much has changed in the human genetic make-up in fifteen hundred years, though I suppose the possibility always exists. Medieval humans were, after all, significantly shorter in stature than were humans of the Post-Information Age.

       “But that doesn’t worry me. So I might be considered a bit short when I get back to my beloved earth…” She smiled. “I can live with that. What keeps me up at night is wondering what my home will look like.”

       She shook her head slightly, her light green eyes narrowed in thought. “I can’t begin to imagine what sorts of changes will have occurred in the infrastructure of everything from the nuclear family to society as a whole to which country now owns what. Is the United States still a superpower? Does it wield the same worldwide influence it once did?”

       Her forehead wrinkled. “These are the thoughts that plague me. The possible answers terrify me as much as they excite me…”

       She took a deep breath and slowly released it. “In approximately two months the crew of the Methuselah is expecting to be able to pick up signals sent to us from earth in the year 3010 A.D. That was the agreed upon date for transmission prior to embarking on this journey. We expect the images we receive to give us a hint of what sort of a world we are coming back to, though we are well aware of the fact that another six hundred years will have passed by on earth by the time we disembark from this spacecraft.”

       Her gaze fell to the photograph of Robert she kept at her station. “My husband will have been dead for one thousand five hundred years, four months, six days, and twelve hours. It is almost unfathomable,” she murmured, “but there it is.”

       Resting her head between her palms, Alex switched off the microphone and stared out into the nothingness beyond the window panel before her. In two months, she and her crew would have their answers. They would know what had become of the earth they’d once called home. And Alex would know whether or not she owed Robert another hundred bucks.

       She could only hope that she did.

Chapter 2

       “Come on, Peacock. You can block me better than that!”

Her breasts heaving up and down from labored breathing, Alex swiped at the perspiration trickling down her forehead with the back of her arm. Peacock was the only other third degree blackbelt on board, so they’d been sparring partners since the voyage had first began. It was a NASA requirement to be in excellent physical condition, so every human on board sported well-honed musculature, but she and the P-man were the only two versed in karate. “Hell, my grandma could have blocked me better than that.”

       Lieutenant Treyson “Peacock” Williams half-grinned and half-frowned at Alex as he hunched over with a palm on either leg, trying to bring down his heart rate. “Maybe,” he said between pants. “But I look a helluva lot better doing it.”

       Alex chuckled as she accepted a wet towel from Marax, the droid that had been accompanying her on missions since she’d flown her first one at age twenty-six. That was ten years ago now. The seven-foot tall cyborg looked more man than machine, the only noticeable differences being his programmed emotions, silver eyes, and bluish skin.

       “Don’t get soft on me,” Alex teased, winking. She patted the cool wet towel against the back of her neck. “Or I’ll have to start sparring with Marax again.” She grimaced. “I’d rather not. Sometimes the big guy doesn’t know when enough is enough.”

       Lt. Williams grinned fully, his handsome ebony face crinkling into a smile. “I’m sure I’ll be back in form tomorrow, Alex. Even a man as fine as me has the occasional off day.”

       Alex rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Why is it that we call you Peacock again?” She made a show of squinting her eyes and tapping a finger against her cheek. “Gee, if only I could remember...”

       Peacock laughed as he patted her on the back. “Time for the mess hall, boss lady. It’s chow time.”

       “Chow time,” she grumbled as she followed the lieutenant from the ship’s rec room. She frowned as the silver sensory door slid open, closing with a hissing sound behind them. “I wonder what tonight’s delight will be? Soup, soup, or if we’re lucky…hey, maybe soup!”

       He snorted at that. “God’s truth I can’t wait to get home and have some real food. I’ve been dying for some of my mama’s cooking for…” His voice trailed off. He took a deep breath and glanced away. “Well, I can’t wait to get back home,” he muttered.

       Alex briefly put a hand on his shoulder to let him know she cared, but said nothing more on the subject. There was no point in it. All the crewmembers were going through the same thing. All of them were coming to terms with the cold, hard fact that life as they’d once known it would not exist when they disembarked. They didn’t yet know what kind of a world they’d be stepping out onto. They could only hope it was a better one.

       “Let’s go eat,” Alex said in the most upbeat tone of voice she could muster as they walked down the ship’s south corridor together. “I’m in the mood for some soup. How about you?”

       Peacock laughed, the sound as forced as Alex’s cheerful voice. “Sounds like a plan, commander.”

* * * * *

       “And then she actually tried to fuck me if you can believe it. Jesus H Christ, I thought I was gonna throw up for sure.”

       Alex genially shook her head as she listened to Dr. John Nielson recount the nearly disastrous run-in he’d had with one of the Neanderthal-like females they’d encountered back on planet Paleo. The creature had taken to John at first sight and had done her damnedest to try and keep him. She’d gone so far as to knock him out from behind then drag him back to her lair. It had taken four days for John to free himself of her, during which time he’d been thought dead by his teammates.

Two months ago it had been no laughing matter. She was glad the warrior-scientist had recovered enough from the ordeal to talk and even joke about it.

       “How do you know she was trying to fuck you?” Lt. Williams asked, his expression serious. “Maybe she was—I don’t know—having a seizure or something. Maybe that’s what all the convulsing was about.”

       “Ah Peacock, come on, man!” John frowned. “As much as I would like to remember it that way, trust me when I say she was trying to impregnate herself. Her pupils were dilated and her vaginas were secreting some gross viscous shit.”

       “Goddamn,” Peacock muttered. “That’s fucking gross.”

       “Yeah, tell me about it.” John grinned as he dunked a cracker into his beef stock soup. “I came that close to fathering a little hybrid, my friend.”

       “Yeeck! That is some twisted shit there. I think that—” Peacock’s body stilled. His jaw slightly unhinged. “Wait a minute, bro. You said her vaginas, as in plural. You mean to tell me that thing had more than one pussy?”

       John nodded. “Two of the ugliest, smelliest, hairiest pussies I’ve ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on.”

Despite the rather repugnant turn the meal conversation had taken, Alex chuckled at Lt. Williams’s horrified expression, a dimple denting her cheek. He looked ready to faint. Peacock might be six-feet four-inches of solid, deadly muscle, but, ever the Romeo, he was something of a soft touch where females were concerned. Apparently the lovemaking connoisseur had finally found a delicacy he didn’t wish to partake of.

       “Goddamn.” The lieutenant shook his head, his lips puckered as though he’d just sucked on a lemon. “All I can say is goddamn.”

       Alex grinned as she lowered the soupspoon from her lips. “Oh come on, Peacock,” she teased. “I thought your motto has always been the more the merrier.”

       The crew broke into laughter. Peacock opened his mouth to make a rebuttal, but was interrupted by the sound of a loud, pulsing, warning tone blaring over the ship’s intercom.

Alex dropped her spoon and flew to her feet. She was about to dash toward the main workstation of the Methuselah to find out what trouble was underfoot when a female droid assigned to the workstation entered the mess hall. The droid was outfitted the same as the human crew, her uniform a skintight black latex bodysuit. “Report, Phariz,” Alex ordered. “What is the malfunction?”

The silver eyes of the blue droid found Alex’s. “The satellite scanners aboard ship have retrieved an unexpected signal from earth, Commander Frazier,” she stoically reported. “You are needed in Work Pod 3 immediately.”

Alex’s eyes rounded. She followed Phariz from the mess hall, her pace brisk. She ignored the murmurings of the crew following on her heels and concentrated on getting from point A to point B. Not that Alex could blame her crew for their collective reaction. She was harboring the same bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Their ship, after all, wasn’t supposed to receive a transmission from earth for another six weeks.

“Is it possible it took less time to receive the transmission than we expected?” This to Phariz. “Or did Houston signal us hundreds of years before they were supposed to?”

“Probability says the latter.”

“Why?”

“Because the former explanation isn’t linear. According to the law of—”

“Never mind.” Alex wasn’t interested in a dry explanation of physics from the droid. The explanation didn’t matter. If Phariz thought that Houston had transmitted a signal to them hundreds of years before they were scheduled to then they probably had. The droid had yet to be wrong.

She frowned thoughtfully as the sensory door to Work Pod 3 slid open. “According to probability,” Alex said to Phariz as she dashed toward the planning table, “what is the single most likely reason Houston would have to contact us early?”

The droid answered her question as if it was of no greater import than the weather. “To warn the Methuselah of a catastrophe.”

“Damn,” Alex heard John mutter. “I was afraid she was going to say that.”

“Everybody sit down and shut up!” Alex shouted when the crew began speculating about the significance of the early signal amongst themselves. “Phariz, pull up the images Houston transmitted.” She took her seat at the head of the round planning table and waited for the holographic display in the center of it to commence. “Let’s find out what in the hell is going on,” she muttered.

The work pod grew quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Alex’s heart felt as though it might beat out of her chest. She realized that no good news would be forthcoming from the transmission. Without knowing to expect an incoming signal on a particular frequency, the odds of the Methuselah picking it up were one in a trillion. Houston had to have known that fact. That they’d opted to chance it and send one anyway didn’t bode well.

By the time the holographic image of a bald man who looked to be in his early fifties appeared, perspiration was dotting Alex’s forehead. The crew could only see the man from the waist-up, as he appeared to be seated in some sort of foreign looking winged-back chair.

“Greetings to you from the year 2792, Methuselah. This transmission is being sent two hundred and eighteen years prior to the pre-established rendezvous time. I am speaking to you from Zutair, the largest city-state in New France. Zutair is located in the area that was once called Houston, before the former United States fell to the French in the year of our lords 2686.”

“No fucking way,” Peacock mumbled, his eyes unblinking.

“I could see Germany,” John added, wincing. “The Germans have always been some fierce mother-fuckers. I can even see Japan. But goddamn France?” His jaw clenched. “No way.”

Alex threw both men a commiserating frown, then turned her attention back to the holographic image of the bald messenger.

“But Zutair is not transmitting to you today to tell you of the fall of the country you once called home, for New France welcomes you with the same open arms as the United States would have. Instead, Zutair has contacted you to warn you of—”

The transmission scrambled, inducing Alex to swear under her breath. “Get the signal back up, Phariz. Now!” When the transmission continued in the same fuzzy manner for another twenty seconds despite the droid’s best efforts, she flew up to her feet. “Elinor!” she shouted out to the scientist aboard ship who was the best versed in holographicary in particular and transmission waves in general. “Can you unscramble the signal?”

“I’ll try,” Dr. Elinor Fitzsimmons-Ivanov threw over her shoulder as she dashed toward the mega-computer console two feet away. “I don’t know what’s jamming it. Shit! Vlad! Peacock! I need some help getting behind this thing. Can you move it?”

Twenty seconds later the mega-computer had been moved enough for the slight female scientist to get behind it and Elinor was busy fumbling with its wiring. “It’s coming back up!” Alex announced, her heart rate over the top. “Okay it’s back online! Good work, doctor.”

Only the images they were now seeing were nonsensical. Apparently whatever part of the bald Zutairan man’s speech they’d missed had been important.

“What the…?” John’s forehead wrinkled. “A Paris fashion show in 2190. The invention of the ‘nanny droid’ in 2287—huh, she can breastfeed. Freethinking cyborgs in 2350. The resurgence of polytheistic religion in 2467…”

“We’re being given a history lesson,” Alex murmured. “Everybody pay close attention.”

A worldwide stock market crash in 2675. Immediate pandemonium. The fall of the United States a decade later…

 The images became almost too horrific to watch from that point onward. Alex’s hand unconsciously flew up to cover her mouth as she learned what had become of the country she had once called home.

The stock market crash had affected the United States and Japan more drastically than any other countries. Both nations had risen to become the undisputed mega-powers of the world by the year 2499, a status way and beyond that of superpower. But because of their dramatic rise, the two nations apparently had the furthest to fall and therefore the most to lose.

And lose they both did.

Not wanting one to subvert the other during a time of vulnerability, the mega-powers had faced off, eventually turning their grotesque biological weaponry against the other. The effect was devastating.

Famine. Poverty. Disease. Complete and utter chaos.

Mutated offspring.

Alex shivered when images of deformed survivors filled the center console. Half-freak and half-human, the race of people that emerged from the ashes of biological warfare was hideous in appearance and more shocking than words could say. Their eyes looked crazed, their animalistic behavior maniacal.

“Jesus Christ,” she heard John mutter. “Holy God.”

France recuperated from the worldwide fall-out the quickest and soon emerged as earth’s only mega-power. Within a decade the French army managed to drive the deformed race of humans underground and reestablish a semblance of normalcy for the entire globe. A globe which had, incidentally, been renamed New France in honor of its unlikely savior.

Alex stared surrealistically at the holographic image playing out before her. Wide-eyed, her stomach knotting, she was as shocked and dazed as her crew.

The images flash-forwarded to the year 2789—and to a new and far more horrific battle that was being fought: freak versus human.

The deformed humans had stayed underground for close to a century. For so long, in fact, that the people of earth—or New France as it was—had believed they’d all died off from their hideous afflictions.

They had been wrong.

The freaks emerged from their lairs stronger and deadlier than before. Within six months they wrested control of the planet and it was now the humans who were forced into hiding. The holographic images glossed over most of the particulars, showing only the bare bones of the turmoil that had long since erupted.

“And so on this night, the eve of Armageddon, we send this final report to you not knowing what the outcome of the battle ahead will be.”

Alex swallowed over the lump in her throat as the Zutairan man continued his speech.

“In roughly six hours time, the mobilized troops of New France will attack the demons’ stronghold in the city-state of Tongor. If we can penetrate their stronghold, then we still have a chance at winning. If we cannot, then I leave you to speculate as to what has befallen humankind.”

Alex threw a hand toward Phariz when the latitude and longitude coordinates of Tongor were given. “Find that area,” she said firmly as she watched the holographic image play out. “If it’s not in your memory bank, then find a map. Do it now.”

“My God,” Peacock murmured, his brown eyes wide. “This is unbelievable.”

“To you, only two years have gone by. To us, hundreds of lifetimes worth. By the time this transmission reaches you the human race as you once knew it will either be victorious or extinct. I know not which. Only that it must be so…”

The transmission scrambled and somehow Alex knew that this time it wouldn’t bounce back. A deafening silence filled Work Pod 3 as all assembled absorbed the information they’d just been given. It was long minutes before anyone moved.

As if they’d all lost the power of speech, the crew of the Methuselah stared at each other like deer caught in headlights. Out of all of the would-be scenarios concerning what earth was liable to look like when they disembarked, no one had envisioned something like this in their worst nightmare.

Elinor’s eyes were wild with fear. Peacock and John looked as though they might vomit. Vlad, Wolfgang, and Kyla looked faint.

“I think we better go see how much ammunition we have left for our weapons,” Alex murmured, breaking the silence as she slowly rose to her feet. On the inside she was shaking like a leaf, but she knew she couldn’t let her crew see that. Someone had to remain strong. As captain and commander, the job fell to her. “Let’s go.”