ARACHNOEXTINCTION

“Oh, come on!” I said as I ripped my ringing phone from my pocket. This was the third call I’d received since arriving on this God forsaken island. I worked for the U.S. government, and my job was to inspect some of the government...facilities, to ensure they’re progressing along in the expected way. I decided if they deserved the budget they’re requesting, or if they’re not worth the tax payers’ dollars. Believe it or not, we didn’t try to waste too much of the taxpayers’ money.

I’m the decider! I chuckled to myself. God, I needed to sleep.

These were not typical government programs: the facilities contained highly classified, and honestly, highly illegal programs; programs that must remain unknown to the public. Where I was today is a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which I was pretty positive is not on most maps. The only thing this island had on it was a ridiculous amount of trees and a fortified building where cloning experiments took place.

Thank the Lord it’s so fortified; who knew what would happen if a group of the small, island-native monkeys decided to wage war against the United States?

Oh, there’s also the dirt landing strip where the pilot just tried to destroy our plane on the approach to the island. Idiot. I was already nervous enough about this trip without the threat of my plane crashing into the ocean.

I balanced the ringing phone in one hand and my luggage in my other as I made my way down the steep stairs out of the plane.

“Let’s just get this visit over with,” I mumbled to myself and took a deep breath to calm my nerves.

All of my assignments were a little mysterious and sketchy, but something had seemed off about this one ever since I was informed about this job. I get the feeling there was a lot more going on at this facility than I was supposed to know. So, I was either sent here to figure out what, or sent here to do my job and ignore everything else.

I couldn’t wait to find out which one it is.

I slipped my phone into my shirt pocket and contemplated the consequences of ignoring the call. I tried to fix my thick, brown hair, which I had almost pulled out in the plane’s horrific landing attempt. I swapped my usual glasses for way too expensive, goofy-looking, aviator sunglasses to hide my eyes from the undeterred sunlight. I stuck my glasses into a pocket in my briefcase.

I brought the minimal amount of luggage with me on these trips. I shouldn’t stay on this island more than one night, so I just carried a single briefcase. Inside, I kept a change of clothes, my laptop, and contacts so I didn’t have to worry about breaking my glasses inside the facility. I kept my cell phone and special flash drive on my person drive at all times. My flash drive was one of the perks of working for the government. This tiny thing could hold more information than a single person would ever need in a lifetime. I could have years’ worth of round-the-clock video surveillance on this thing without making a dent in the storage.

I made sure everything in my briefcase was secure and straightened the sunglasses on my face. The last thing I needed was the glasses slipping off my face and breaking. I spent more money than any sane person should on these sunglasses.

If there’s one thing I learned from working in the U.S. government: you have got to own some expensive sunglasses, or you just won’t fit in.

The ringing phone reached maximum annoyance, and I pulled it out of my pocket.

Since arriving five minutes ago, I’ve had two different government officials call and try to convince me of their various points of view on these experiments. I never listen, but every visit I go on, several try to call and sway my opinion. So understandably, when I got my third call within those five minutes, my temper flared.

“What!” I said as flipped my phone open. Yes, I had a flip phone; old school for life. All these young kids burying their face in their fancy internet phones and looking at the gif moving pictures disturbed me. They should be outside throwing rocks at cars or breaking sticks on each other, but that’s just my opinion.

“Excuse me?” said a gruff voice from the other end.

Oops.

“Oh, I’m sorry sir, I was getting a lot of calls from other higher ups, and I didn’t expect a call from....” My voice faded. I could hear his lack of caring in the silence. I finished in a whisper, “you.”

“You have caller I.D. I suggest you USE IT!” he said to me. I held the phone away from my ear so his screaming didn’t bust an eardrum. The pilot walking next to me raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, go learn how to land without breaking the plane,” I hissed at him with the receiver covered. The pilot scoffed, looking hurt and offended, and walked away.

“I do apologize, sir, what can I do for you?” I said, hoping I wouldn’t get a response screamed at me.

“Those nerds in that lab are requesting a ludicrous amount of money. You tell them if they even want HALF of the budget they have now, we want that damn mammoth walking around by Christmas!” the gruff voice yelled through the phone. I could almost feel the spit flying from his mouth as he spoke. He was a hardcore spit-talker. His fluids would rain down upon you as he roared and screamed; it was smelly and disgusting.

“Yes, si--”

“And if you EVER answer the phone like you did before, you’ll be answering your phone through your ass!” he hung up.

“Well, that’s a bit kinky for my taste but okay,” I said to the phone, his voice still buzzing around in my head.

Truth be told, I wasn’t for all this crazy cloning nonsense; what’s dead was dead and should stay that way. Have the movies taught us nothing? Don’t play God. I did not agree with what these facilities were up to. This kind of power should not have been in human hands.

But, if I had to be honest, it would be freaking cool to see a Woolly Mammoth stomping around. I mean, it’s not like we would be taking people to an island full of vicious, bloodthirsty, people-devouring dinosaurs or something insane like that. These gigantic beauties haven’t even been extinct that long; they were still around when early man was walking and grunting.

A black SUV came speeding onto the landing strip where I was waiting. It screeched to a stop a few feet from me. A large, muscled-up man with light skin, dressed in a black suit and sunglasses stepped out. He was rocking those shades, and the government would be proud. I wasn’t a small man; I worked out and kept in shape, but this guy made me feel like a scrawny teenager again.

“Could you look more government agent-y?” I asked him as I offered out my hand.

He ignored my hand. Instead, he put a finger to his ear and held up a finger to keep me silent.

“So that’s a yes to my previous question,” I muttered under my breath.

“Dr. Jail?” he asked. I rolled my eyes. Come on, dude.

“Dr. Gale,” I said with a forced smile.

“Sure,” he said and opened the side door of the SUV. “In.”

“Alright, let’s take it easy, Mr. CIA,” I said and climbed in. I set the computer I had tucked under my arm on the seat beside me. I didn’t realize how hot it was outside until the cold air from the A/C from the car rushed over me. The kind man who greeted me climbed back into the passenger seat and gestured the driver to go. Both men dressed the same way, but the driver had brown hair, shaved into a buzz cut and dark skin. They both wore what looked to be ridiculously expensive sunglasses. These guys got it.

As we sped off, I saw the pilot sprinting after us, waving his hands to get us to stop. I waved back and smiled as the SUV continued to accelerate. Once the pilot was a speck in the distance, I relaxed against the cool leather seats.

The beauty of this small island captured my attention. The island scenery had a ridiculous amount of green and was gorgeous beyond imagination. It was perfect. There were large amounts of thick trees that stretched well over my head and thick grass sprinkled across the island. This island’s natural inebriating beauty almost made me forget the borderline insane things our government was attempting to accomplish here. My eyes wandered to the sparkling, clear ocean water. I kept my sight on the waves crashing on the shore as we drove.

“You guys ever go for a swim?” I ask the two men.

“No,” the driver said, his face sagged into a frown.

“Shut up, Darren,” said the man sitting in the passenger seat. “In fact, shut up, both of you.”

My phone went off again.

“Let it ring,” the angry man said.

I gave him the biggest smile I could as I flipped open the phone and clicked speaker.

“Yes, sir?” I said and tried to ignore the sunglasses staring through me.

“Sir? I didn’t know that’s the kind of role-play you were talking about,” said a soft, sweet voice with a cheery laugh.

“Oh, hi honey. I--I didn’t know it was you,” I said, and could not stop myself from turning a bright shade of red, much to the amusement of the two men up front.

“You seriously need to learn to check who is calling. It shows on the screen.”

“Yeah, you’re not the first person to tell me that today,” I said, mumbling to myself.

“Did your mysterious boss man threaten to put something up your butt again?” she said amid a stifled laugh.

“Annnnd I’m taking you off speaker phone,” I said as both men turned to give me a concerned and weirded-out look.

“You know damn well he did,” I said with a sad sigh once I brought the phone to my face.

“So, would you like me to dress up as this nameless man for you when you finally come home? We could make all this butt-shoving fantasy a reality.”

“That is just beyond not okay. I would really prefer not to,” I said with a shudder.

“But I kind of liked it when you called me sir,” she purred.

“Sometimes you are just too weird for me.”

She laughed, which always made me smile. I could listen to her laugh for days.

“How’s Dylan?” I asked her.

“Your son is fine; he’s staying over one of his friend’s house for the night.”

“My son? Oh great,” I moaned.

“What?”

“You said, MY son. I know what that means.”

“And what does that mean?”

“That means he did something bad.”

I could almost feel her smile over the phone.

“Not…bad. Per se. That can wait for you to get back.”

The SUV came to a stop in front of a massive steel gate. There was a barbed wire attached to the top of the metal wall, which I felt was a bit unnecessary, because no one was climbing a twenty-foot steel wall. Plus, if someone was to climb a twenty-foot steel wall, I have serious doubts that a little barbed wire would stop them at that point.

A small drone with a camera attached to the bottom came flying over the wall and went to each one of our windows to get a look at us. The gate started to open, and the drone disappeared.

“What are you going to do tonight, with the house to yourself?” I asked as I watched a gray building appear from behind the opening gate. This was like entering a highly-guarded castle instead of an offshore hidden cloning facility. Go, tax dollars, go.

“Well...,” she purred. “I think I’m going to take a bath, and pretend you’re here.”

I coughed and the driver raised an eyebrow at me. Taking my wife off speaker phone was probably the smartest move I made all day; her filter tended to be iffy at best. She could turn any normal situation into an incredibly awkward situation where I couldn’t show my face around my former boss, Dr. Shammel, again. I had to leave my steady, easy going, well-paying job to work for the government to inspect secret and illegal cloning facilities. Just to generalize, nothing too particular.

“Ah okay, I got to go now,” I said, and the car came to a stop outside the buildings front doors.

“Aww, you’re no fun when you work,” she said.

“Take pictures,” I whispered.

She let out another roar of hard laughter.

“I love you. Good luck, my big government man.”

“Love you too. Call you tonight,” I said and snapped the phone closed. That’s a big perk of owning a flip phone; I get to snap it closed. Choke on that, fancy touch screen phones that are way too expensive and can do more than the laptop I spent over a grand on a few years ago. I’m not harboring any deep seeded anger or anything like that. Stupid smart phones.

The driver stepped out of the car and opened my door for me.

“Thank you, my good sir,” I said and slid out.

“My pleasure,” he said back. He received a whack on the head from the angry man.

“Do you guys have a gag order or something?” I asked.

“Gag you,” the angry man mumbled under his breath.

“Welcome!” a voice proclaimed as the glass front doors to the facility slid open in an overly-dramatic fashion.