Old Fart ran through the gate and into the street. Only two Subjects followed. The others were running back toward the building where Eadie was.
“Subjects below!” Old Fart yelled. He darted sideways and then straightened his path again. “Subjects below! This is Old Fart!” He made another quick, random turn. Another Subject fell to the street, headless. “I have orders from General Eadie! Show me a hand or an arm!” He zigzagged again, snapping his head to see from one corner sewer drain to another. “Subjects below! Can you hear—”
An arm appeared, spindly and white, rising cautiously from the sewer across the street. Old Fart ran toward it.
He dove toward the sewer, his tattered trousers shredding as he slid on his knees. He reached out, shoving the plastic brick at the spindly hand. “General Eadie says to keep this safe,” he said.
The little hand took the brick and carried human destiny away into the sewer. The kill shot disintegrated Old Fart’s skull.
Crossing the CBD
“The snipers are tearing them apart!” Dok said. “The Prophet was right. They’re trying to keep everyone from leaving, to make sure the spores are still here when the bomb drops.”
Eadie leaned on him harder but pushed faster ahead. Two of the Unnamed shots had passed through her middle, tearing fist-sized exit holes in her back. “At least some might live if we make it to the train station!” she said.
“You’ll be dead for sure if you don’t let me stop the bleeding.”
“I’ll be dead either way. But if I get there, then they’ll follow.”
She tripped on a headless corpse. Dok’s hand tightened around her shoulder, stabilizing her.
“They’re following, yes,” he said. “But you’re not a goner. We’ll get you fixed up.”
“Not this time.”
She took longer strides. Dok glanced behind and saw Subjects and even Fiends running to catch up to the mob. The sniper shots dropped most of them, headless, but a few were still moving toward the train station. “They must’ve moved the snipers way back,” he said.
“Yeah, I’d guess they would.”
Lightning illuminated the squat, wall-less roof over the train station.
“Hurry!” Eadie said. “Help me get up the stairs and down onto the tracks! They’ll follow.”
Dok hefted her up the stairs. He jumped down onto the tracks and turned. Eadie jumped down, almost knocking him over. Subjects and Fiends spilled down onto the tracks.
“I need help carrying the General!” Dok said. “She’s hurt! Help me pick her up so we can move faster!”
Hands lifted Eadie from all sides. “Follow me!” Dok said, running down the tracks as they slanted sharply, heading underground, the dim bioluminescent lights seeming to stretch down forever. “Maybe we should just stay on the tracks, Eadie. They’re sealed against flooding. We know the Subjects’ tunnels sure aren’t.”
“Feds’ll expect that,” Eadie said, struggling with the words. Her breathing was ragged. “Only way to avoid them is to use the Subjects’ routes. Find the place where you came in!”
Dok led them to a short set of concrete steps rising up from the tracks. A bioplastic door hung open above them. Water gushed out. “I found the opening, Eadie.”
“Everybody inside!” Eadie said. “Go, go, go! Don’t worry about me! Into the tunnels and keep moving as far as you can!”
Dok stood outside the opening. “Subjects first! They’ll lead the way to the drier tunnels. You can make it! Higher tunnels are close in there! But hurry!”
None entered the tunnel. “They might follow you if you go first, Dok,” Eadie said.
“I can’t leave you here, Eadie.”
“You’re going to have to. But at least you can get the others away before they drop the bomb.” She tried to shove him roughly toward the door but it manifested more as a gentle nudge. “Go.”
Dok went in. A few Subjects followed, but most did not, and none of the Fiends moved. Eadie grabbed the Subject next to her, her fingers digging into the soft, spongy flesh. “Get in there,” she said. “That’s an order from me!” The Subject did not comply. He stayed there, almost frozen, until Eadie took his gun away from him. Her fingers felt cold around it. Her legs were numb.
“Go through this door!” she said, with the strongest voice she could muster. “That’s my final order to you all: Live.”
Eadie raised the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
The last functioning gypsum mine
Lawrence fought hard to keep his face from registering emotion as he watched the computer play the image of the expanding orange mushroom cloud over and over again. The newscaster spoke in a stunned voice.
… Here it is again from a different angle. This is from the CBD’s west gate camera. Listen to that explosion.
The Amelix building was entirely destroyed, and the neighboring Glenger Corporation building was severely damaged. To this point, Federal authorities have not explained why the strike was deemed necessary, but they do confirm that it was a threat of the most extreme nature. The device detonated was of the class known as ‘battlefield nukes,’ which have a very limited range and very low rates of radioactive fallout …
“So now you know what happened to your friends,” his father said, the words echoing off the limestone walls. “Or your fellow revolutionaries, or whatever the hell it was you thought you were. At least they took out a lot of Ricker’s Unnamed for us.” He paused. “Son, I hope you can see that you’ve really fucked up here. Our family status is shot, our family business is shot … But that doesn’t mean it’s over for us. I’m piecing it all back together, building something new. We have a few hundred Unnamed now, led by your loyal schoolmate Jack and your sister Ani, and of course they answer to me. You’ll lead them too, Sett. And together we’ll do great things.”
Lawrence said nothing. He stood running a thumb over one of his double gold rings as all he had once stood for evaporated from a new angle.
MediPirates Bulletin Board
Posted by Vron #dZ229e:
Hello, everyone.
Please don’t lose heart. Dok M. stands out, you know. There is nowhere he can hide for very long, especially when the Federal cameras all run recognition software. They will catch him and punish him for poisoning all those people, and then perhaps our patients’ faith in all of us will be restored.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Dok’s last posts to this board, regarding the street drug that produced a catatonic state and then a severely altered personality. I urge you all to search for posts on this topic; for some reason I haven’t been able to find many of the ones I remember.
There are at least twelve other accounts now of someone being dosed with this new street drug, becoming catatonic for a period of time, and emerging with a different and often violent personality.
If there are twelve more people with this condition and the cases are still growing in number (as they appear to be), this ordeal may have only just begun.
“Dok Murray, you are sentenced to exile from the Underground Kingdom for attempting to destroy our most sacred artifact, the Ashes of the General.” The speaker was an upstart, eager-beaver kid they had moved into Old Fart’s former quarters. He called himself Judge New Catharsis, a grandiose name hardly befitting the scrawny, pimply-faced young magistrate. “If you return to the Underground Kingdom under any circumstance, you will be drowned in the Deep Chamber.”
The judge nodded to the Fiend henchmen who provided muscle for his makeshift courtroom. After the blast, the Fiends had struck a deal with the remaining Subjects, agreeing to provide an underground security force, food and other necessary supplies in exchange for the use of the Subjects’ tunnels. “Eject him,” New Catharsis said. The Fiends grabbed Dok by the shoulders.
“Wait!” Dok said. “Please! I told you. Those are not the general’s ashes! They’re spores of a terrible disease that will kill every last person on the planet! Please let me sterilize them so they’ll b
e safe.”
“To keep it safe was the general’s last order regarding the artifact, as told to us by the honorable Old Fart. Keep it safe is what we intend to do.”
The Fiends dragged Dok from the room. There was no point in struggling. They escorted him through a winding series of pipes and steam tunnels that ended at a storm sewer with a missing manhole cover. The Fiends roughly shoved him out.
The sun’s rays stung like needles after so long underground. The area looked abandoned, with crumbling, collapsed buildings pockmarked with signs of gunfire. There were no landmarks to guide him.
He started off in a random direction.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Gypsy Hope Thomas, Rebecca K. Sterling, and Kari Sanders.
Thanks, Jill.
Thanks to my various corporate friends who helped me figure this out by sharing their stories of entrapment, manipulation, and helplessness.
I dedicate “Seventeen” to my wife Jennifer, without whose efforts, patience, wisdom, and grace, I would not exist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark D. Diehl writes novels about power dynamics and the way people and organizations influence each other. He believes that obedience and conformity are becoming humanity’s most important survival skills, and that we are thus evolving into a corporate species.
Diehl has: been homeless in Japan, practiced law with a major multinational firm in Chicago, studied in Singapore, fled South Korea as a fugitive, and been stranded in Hong Kong.
After spending most of his youth running around with hoods and thugs, he eventually earned his doctorate in law at the University of Iowa and did graduate work in creative writing at the University of Chicago. He currently lives and writes in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Website: www.ArmyOfTheDoomed.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dark.mark.diehl
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkDDiehl
Contents
Author's Note
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PART II
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Book of Eadie, Volume One of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 37
