Overlord's Revenge

By Charles Downing

Why are a chimpanzee’s muscles so much stronger than ours?
And what will happen to our population and planet if people start living much, much longer?

The answers to these questions intersect in the end-of-the-world thriller Overlord’s Revenge.

A new discovery, funded by a shadowy mogul, is made that promises vastly increased vigor and lifespan, but there are drawbacks. This mogul is racing to wreak revenge on the people who killed his family and also to reduce the earth’s population in order to make way for his new, enlightened society. This has to be done before another group of equally powerful men can stop him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Downing
• Release date: Sep 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310906251

Charles Downing

Charlie Downing has a science background and has worked in the investment and banking industries. He is currently living in Bangkok, Thailand and San Diego, California. His email address is [e-mail]

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Overlord’s Revenge

Charles Downing

Copyright Charles Downing

***~~~***

Overlord’s Revenge

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

-Confucius

Grass

Grass…the smell of new mown grass…smelled like sunshine and freedom…Steve Word loved it, brought him back to his childhood, following his father mowing the lawn in the backyard. He remembered playing with a stick, making up rhymes, not a worry in the world. A world of security, free spirits and sunshine…warmth on his back, long summer days, play with friends. Today was good, the future would be even better.

He breathed the smell in deeply. It smelled sweet, green and alive, and felt wonderful against his face and cheek. He could almost taste the sweet moisture of life in it. Raindrops were beginning to fall, a typical Colorado early spring afternoon.

He felt moisture dripping from his ear and across his cheek. Raising his head, he felt a sharp pain in the left side of his head. He got to his knees, wobbling.

He heard, Are you all right? He lifted his head and looked up at Lauren. She screamed, Omigod!!

Steve put his hand to his head. He felt warm liquid all over his face and neck. Blood? Then he remembered a gunshot, stumbled to his feet, looking at his clothes…blood, blood everywhere.

Lauren pulled at his arm, saying frantically, Let’s get out of here!! They’ll be here any second!

The Taxi

Pulling him by the arm, she wheeled to a line of taxis. Near the front of the line was a Middle Eastern man standing and rolling up his prayer rug. A tall, dark man with a scraggly beard and turban, he jumped and quickly grabbed her free arm.

In a thick Middle Eastern accent, as he opened the taxi door he said "Please get in my taxi now. It is an honor to serve you."

They jumped in the back seat and ducked down as the large circular door behind them opened and sprouted hands at the edges. The driver started the engine quickly and pulled rapidly away from the line of taxis.

So, where to, Boss? he said in a strong New York accent, looking over his shoulder to see if they were being followed.

I don’t care, Steve said, Just away from here! They pulled onto I-70 and headed west, followed at a distance by dark sedans. He heard sirens somewhere in the distance.

That’s the first time anyone’s made it up from down there, the driver said.

His accent reminded Lauren of the movie ‘A Bronx Tale’.

It’s like a Roach Motel; they check in, but they don’t check out, the driver said.

Steve was confused, but in too much pain to think much. The driver said that the wound appeared to be very slight, but bled a lot.

Who are you? Lauren asked.

CIA, Special Agent Matthews, he replied, At least, the part of the CIA that they don’t control, the part trying to stop these lunatics.

Are all of the taxi drivers CIA agents? Steve asked.

Some are ours, some are theirs, Matthews said, Some are actually just taxi drivers. One thing, though; working there has certainly improved my Arabic. What did you find out down there?

The Institute

Steve gazed out of the window of the taxi, at the clear, crisp dusk of Denver, trying to remember. Lights started to twinkle as they drove west on I-70 and up toward Lookout Mountain. He cracked the window and breathed in cool air. His head was throbbing and Lauren was mopping blood from his face and neck.

A flood of images from his past came boiling to the surface, through the pain and blood. He saw scenes from his childhood, adolescence and adulthood, all jumbled together. Life hadn’t always been the mess it was now.

As a child he’d been a good kid, athletic, smart, the teacher’s favorite. Then his parents divorced and he began getting into trouble. He was fighting with everyone, stealing…at first shoplifting, but graduating to bicycles, motorcycles and cars. He was ingenious and had his eye on a nice Learjet that he could steal. He’d cased the airport where it was hangared and made all the arrangements; bribed the guard and negotiated with some gangster types for the sale. That was when the men came for him…

They came in the middle of the night, five beefy men with a straitjacket. He kicked and spit at them, cursing and yelling for help until they put a ball gag in his mouth. He yelled at his mother for help, but she just watched sadly as the men pulled Steve out of the house, forced him into a waiting van and drove out into the night.

They drove for what seemed like hours and were on a small rural road when a car with its headlights off unexpectedly pulled out in front of them. The van driver had no time to avoid it, and as he swerved and hit the brakes, the van skidded toward the car.

Steve learned the meaning of helplessness that instant, bound in a seatbelt, straitjacket and mouth gag, watching in wide-eyed terror as the van windshield exploded and pieces of glass came flying at him. His brain recorded everything in slow motion, the shards of glass suspended, gleaming in the reflected radiance of the twisted headlight. He was frozen as a tumbling crystal flew at his temple and casually, cruelly cut a long slow slice into his skin. Like a kid carving into a tree trunk with a pocket knife, the shard left a memory of itself across the side of Steve’s face.

Then van pitched to the right and struck the car again. The roof collapsed and folded like a blade, slicing like a guillotine at Steve’s forehead, the sharp edge stopping only inches from lobotomizing him.

Steve sat, eyes wide and heart pounding, unblinking, staring straight ahead, aware only of his heartbeat. Until the conversation on the two-way radio began and later a dark limo arrived, packed him in and drove up a dark, winding country road to a towering stone castle, stark under the full moon…the Institute.

Cow Killer

Still in the taxi, Steve remembered that just a few weeks ago, something killed a cow on his tiny ranch in the foothills outside Denver. He didn’t have many cows, money was tight and the loss of even one cow hurt. It had been mutilated, as if something had killed it for sport rather than food. The intestines were gone, tongue sliced out, udders removed and the eyes taken out, but none of the meat was gone. So he was keeping an eye out for anything unusual.

One evening he made his rounds, fed the cows and watched a magnificent sunset. He liked to have a cigar and a nip of whiskey while he relaxed, enjoying the sounds and watching the peaceful transition from dusk to dark.

He sat until it got completely dark in an old chair made from cow horns that he’d picked up in a shop in town. The crickets chirped and the fireflies flashed, all calling out in the darkness, looking for love.

Good for them, thought Steve, they all have a better chance of finding love tonight than I do.

A mangled refrain from ‘Pancho and Lefty’ kept running through his head,

We could have had it any day,

We only let it slip away,

Out of blindness I suppose…

The last ashes of his cigar fell into the cow horn ashtray. He didn’t know why the song kept rolling through his mind. Seemed like some sort of metaphor, but he’d figure it out another day. Now it was time to get back to the house.

He stood up and stretched. He started walking for his pickup truck when he heard a rustling in the bush on the far side, sounding like something large. He paused, thinking it might possibly be a mountain lion, and then walked to the truck, picked up his rifle through the open window and turned toward the sound.

Who’s there? he called, realizing that it was dumb to talk to an animal.

He started walking in the sound of the direction, expecting whatever it was to run away. The bushes moved again, but this time toward him.

"What the hell?" he thought, as he raised the rifle, pointing it at the bush. His heart quickened and his body tensed as the adrenaline began pumping through his veins. Before he could say anything else, something jumped from behind that bush to another one even closer to him.

He fired at the ground next to that bush and whatever it was jumped back. Steve didn’t think he had hit it, but he backed away, facing the bushes, and opened his truck door. He turned the ignition key and headlights on, pointing toward the bushes.

Standing beside the truck, rifle raised, he yelled, "Come out, now!" his voice sounding strained to himself.

The bushes swayed as if something was moving toward him quickly; he fired twice and heard a guttural cry, then undergrowth moving as if something was running away, toward the road. He got in the truck and pulled out on the road, shining the headlights down the dark highway.

Something large emerged from the woods fifty yards ahead on the left, ran into the road, turned quickly and looked at the truck, then loped away down the right shoulder. Steve started after it.

As he closed in, it ducked into the woods on the right and ran parallel to the road. Steve could see strobe-light glimpses of it through trees as it appeared to run on two legs sometimes, on four others.

"That can’t be right," he thought, it has to be bad light and shadows.

But it was fast, and turned quickly to the right along a dirt road. Steve turned onto the same road, following it to the sign beside a ranch house that said ‘Veterinarian, Large and Small Animals.’ Stopping the truck and jumping out with his rifle, he saw something move behind a tree.

He pulled the rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off two quick rounds. He heard a yelp and then underbrush rustling, movement getting quieter and quieter as it ran away.

A bright light high on a lamp post turned on, the front door of the house-turned-clinic opened and an attractive woman in jeans and a white lab coat stepped out.

What’s going on? she demanded angrily, Why are you shooting on my property?

Dr. Lauren Moore was the veterinarian and new County Extension Agent who had taken the job three months before.

I apologize, Steve replied, I’m really sorry, but something killed one of my cows and I was chasing it, I think. I almost had it, but it ran off that way, he said, pointing into the woods.

Killed your cow? she said,This is the first I’ve heard about that around here.

With brunette hair and intelligent blue eyes, she was very attractive and he’d heard good things about her from people whose animals she had treated.

Some people in the southern part of the state think aliens butchered two hundred of their cattle, didn’t even take the good parts, she said, What do you think it was?

I’m not sure, couldn’t get a good look at it in the dark, but it was large. Could be a really big mountain lion or wolf, but I don’t think so, he said.

Why? she asked.

I’m not sure, just a feeling. But I’d keep my doors and windows locked if I were you, just to be safe.

Bob

Bob Johnson had been a star student at Yale, graduating with a doctorate in Biochemistry and placing second in the NCAA championships in the pole vault. He had been a favorite of his mentor professor, who had recommended him to an old friend in Britain with a lucrative government contract on anti-aging research.

The project focused on telomeres and mitochondria. Telomeres are strings on the ends of DNA strands that are very long when we are born, and grow shorter as we age. They protect the genes in DNA as the cell divides and are thought to be a key to a much longer human life span. Mitochondria in each cell produce the energy used by the body.

At the lab, the scientists had a remarkable breakthrough with a procedure of manipulation of extracellular matrix to change gene expression. The extracellular matrix is a structural and biochemical network surrounding the genes of the DNA. It regulates what protein, hormone, enzyme or catalyst that each gene in the DNA expresses, or produces.

The muscles of a chimpanzee are no larger than a man’s, but they are many times stronger. The lab team sequenced the chimpanzee genome, which is 99% the same as a human’s, and determined what the differences were in the expression of the same genes. Then they set about manipulating those expressions. They were able to make changes in telomeres and mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of the cells, which are very closely involved in the aging process. The last version of the formula not only ramped up energy production hugely in mitochondria, and extended chromosomal telomeres, but also hugely improved physical strength, vitality and longevity in lab rats.

Bob had come into the lab one morning, yawning and turning on the lights when he casually glanced into one of the rat cages. All the rats in a cage were dead and covered in blood except one, who was bleeding as he limped about.

Aldous! Bob called to the lab director.

Yes, what is it Bob? Dr. Aldous Williams replied.

Come look at this!

Dr. Aldous Williams came quickly to the cage, Oh my god! What happened?

I don’t know! I just got here.

They inspected the other cages; all were in the same condition, dead rats and blood everywhere. In the last cage, the two rats left alive were fighting viciously, hissing and biting.

Call an immediate meeting! Dr. Williams said.

The researchers went to work on developing what they jokingly called the secret antidote. When injected periodically, it modulated the effects of the formula, allowing the rats to retain the improvements in their youth, vigor and strength without descending into a savage rage. One injection of the formula serum was permanent, but needed periodic injections of the antidote.

The serum was complicated, and they were refining it to eliminate the need for the antidote. Bob had been assigned the task of reporting to the agency, but he neglected to report the problems and sent only rosy and optimistic results.

He was confident that this glitch would be ironed out, the next formulation would be perfect, and they would all make bundles of cash. He also wanted to be associated with a successful project, and this was looking to be the biggest project in history! This project might allow some people to live immensely longer and healthier. Immortality could be close!

How much more successful could a scientist be, he thought, than finding what men have sought in vain forever? The fountain of youth!

Bob had looked at the increase in strength, vigor and libido in the animals with a little jealousy. As he watched the experimental animals grow stronger, live longer and mate vigorously, he thought, they’re mammals like us, with similar neuronal and biochemical pathways. The formula would probably have the same effect in humans.

He made his calculations about the proper human dosage. He thought about trying it on himself but, remembering what the formula had originally done to the first rats, thought it probably wouldn’t be safe. He sometimes had dreams about giant super strong human-rat hybrids cornering him in the lab, and just as the rats were going to tear him to pieces, he’d wake up sweating with his heart pounding.

They were finishing the initial trials on the first formulation at the lab and working on the improved, final batch of formula when a well-dressed man and two assistants, possibly his bodyguards, showed up at the lab. Dr. Williams greeted him and introduced him to Bob as William DeNovo, the director of the funding agency and then they went into Dr. Williams’s office and closed the door.

Bob had heard loud words exchanged between Dr. Williams and DeNovo. Apparently DeNovo thought that Dr. Williams was holding back information from them, trying to capitalize on it for his own profit later.

I hope they don’t know it’s really me who’s been holding back, Bob thought.

He moved closer to the door to listen. DeNovo accused Dr. Williams. Williams angrily denied it and DeNovo demanded to be injected with the formula.

It’s not ready yet, Dr. Williams said.

You don’t have a choice, Bob heard. As you well know, I have the means to have you meet with a fatal lab accident and no one will ever know what happened. So, what’s your answer?

It’s your funeral, Bob heard Dr. Williams say, Hand me that syringe.

Exit

Projects like these stopped on a dime when the funding ran out, and it looked like that was shaping up here. It was only a matter of time until the records were