The Apocalypse Watch
Book 2 of the Last Real Man post-apocalyptic harem series
J Foster Ward
Published by Evil Genius Society
Edited by Craig Martel
The Apocalypse Watch
Book 2 of the Last Real Man post-apocalyptic harem series
J Foster Ward
Published by Evil Genius Society
Edited by Craig Martel
Warning: please read all the way through if you need to be warned about adult content
Sometime in the tomorrows after the 23rd century the world ended. Nobody knows how or when, but a small group of people saw it coming, and prepared for the end. Inside secret bunkers they stashed science, guns, robots and a supply of cloned bodies and trusted it all to a computer to wake them up when it was time to rebuild civilization.
In the future, every science fantasy had been realized: clones, androids, laser guns, genetically modified supermen and even animals gifted with the ability to walk upright and almost-human intelligence.
It all existed, and that was before cataclysmic disasters released biogenetic forces that created mutants, radiation made atomic superbugs, and worldwide computer viruses drove the robots insane.
Now, inside one secret bunker for the Tomorrow Program, Jake Mortimer must take on a new mission – save a tribe of evolved humans from man-eating mutants.
But it won’t be that easy when the mutants use the ‘Tox’: a psychic power that let’s them control humans. And on top of that, his fellow clone and annoying 23rd century dubutante (and sometimes girlfriend) Milan duPont has gone and got herself kidnapped by the same mutants.
Atomic monsters, robots, mutants and the barbarian descendants of humans from the surface world are making one tough day for the Last Real Man.
CONTENT WARNING: this story contains adult themes and imagines a world where today’s cultural norms and civilization wouldn’t cut it. The protagonist happily uses physical violence, foul language, and has the sexual duty to repopulate the world.
This story contains a harem and is an Adult Science Fantasy novel.
Contents
Chapter 1 : Shut the Front Door
Chapter 2 : Bad Memories
Chapter 3 : Bravo
Chapter 4 : Sacrificial Altar
Chapter 5 : Barefoot
Chapter 6 : Taming of the Voxer
Chapter 7 : Dogfight
Chapter 8 : Job Stress
Chapter 9 : Tox Contamination
Chapter 10 : The Trapmaker
Chapter 11 : Tunnel Rats
Chapter 12 : No Escape
Chapter 13 : Last Train to Outside
Other Works by in the Last Real Man series
How to Beat Tomorrow (book 1)
The Apocalypse Watch (book 2)
The Big Weird (book 3) coming December 2019
Shelter Tomorrow (book 4)
Chapter 1
: Shut the Front Door
The cargo elevator was big enough to park a truck inside, and creepy enough to host a haunted house. A dank, moldy box with a dozen plastic crates stacked at one end and a single functioning light strip that made a harsh blue-white light. And flickered. The elevator was supposed to be in a sealed shaft that led to the upper level into Bravo module, but Jake supposed that after a couple hundred years even a tiny leak could have caused this much damage.
He was riding the elevator because he was a clone who took his orders from an artificial intelligence that was sounding more and more hysterical by the passing hour. The latest symptom of the AI’s hypochondria was that… how had he put it? Oh yes, something was eating his brains. Jake didn’t quite trust the machine intelligence, but he was trapped inside the Tomorrow Program bunker and had limited options for refusing commands. The AI was tapped into everything, saw all and controlled all. About the only thing it didn’t have control over was Circe – the other AI who ran the cloning facility.
“I think you should have brought more equipment,” the bird hologram said.
Cool Breeze – the artificial intelligence that operated most of Nevermore’s Tomorrow Program bunker – tended to communicate through holographic representations of the corporate logo. The blackbird was being projected from the tiny functioning panel by the elevator controls.
“What else could I possibly bring? Any more equipment and I wouldn’t be able to move.”
Jacob was kitted out like a soldier expecting a chemical warfare attack. Over the blue coveralls he’d first donned the rubberized yellow hazmat suit complete with hood and gas mask, then the splat armor and finally the belts and pouches of gear he’d packed: rope, knife, lighter, chemical glow sticks, water, emergency ration bar, compass, emergency blanket, water filter, mylar tarp, multitool, flashlight and spare socks. Because spare socks were worth their weight in gold when you had wet feet.
“I prepared a manifest. Synthetica was supposed to see you brought it all,” the bird hologram replied.
Jake fumed. He hadn’t wanted half that crap. Didn’t trust gadgets from the 23rd century. The gear the android Synthetica had suggested to bring included a life force detector, wrist-buddy computer, medical Krisis-kit, portable floating flood light on an anti-grav tether the size of a soup bowl and darkscope goggles.
“Listen, Cool Breeze, I know you’re blind on the upper level,” Jake said reasonably.
“Not just blind! All my sensors are down. There could be an army of radioactive moon cultists up there and I wouldn’t know!”
“But…” Jake interrupted. “You can’t plan for everything. You have to improvise. Besides, it’s not like the end of the world if I die up there.”
“Really, Jake? You’re joking about the end of civilization? You have a pretty cavalier attitude towards the apocalypse.”
Given that Jake had survived almost five hundred years past his own death and been brought back to life inside the Tomorrow Program’s secret bunker to repopulate the world in the (apparently quite likely) event of Armageddon, Jake felt comfortable with his attitude. He wasn’t gibbering insane, or suicidal, or even depressed at his lot in life. First, he hadn’t much belonged in the 21st century, and second, his brand-new clone body had been built with all the modern conveniences of the 23rd century. That included some sort of naturally produced enzyme that kept him as positive as a motivational speaker. He literally couldn’t feel bad about anything.
“I only meant if I die, the Resurrection computer will clone me into a new body and the next time I’ll just go back up knowing what I’m facing. And at least I’m bringing lots of guns,” Jake shrugged.
For weapons he carried the slugthrower pistol holstered on his belt and the heavy pistol shotgun on the other. He’d added a machete strapped to his back operating on the theory that swords don’t run out of ammunition. There were energy weapons available, but after his experience almost boiling his own skin off with a plasma gun, the only powered weapon he decided to carry was a stunbeamer; the Lights Out! X-26 neural stun module.
“And, hey, Cool Breeze, remind me why you picked me for this mission?”
The holographic bird of the Nevermore logo spun sullenly quiet a moment. “I assume that’s rhetorical? Because do you really want to get into the fact you killed almost your entire team and I have to keep them in virtual psycho-surgery?”
“They started it,” Jake said.
The fact was his commander – a man by the improbable 23rd century name of Goliath T Cockfiend – had been recloned as a stark raving lunatic. And the subcommander Whiteman had more than a couple screws loose; Whiteman and most of Jake’s fellow clones had mutinied and it was only the fact Jake had done Cool Breeze a favor by killing them that Jake was even walking around.
&nb
sp; “You’re almost at the upper level,” Cool Breeze said, changing the subject. “Do you know your route to Alpha module? It’s imperative you get there as fast as you can. There’s something wrong with my core processors and need I remind you that…“
“If you go down, the whole facility goes down, and the future of the world is at stake,” Jake finished the sentence for him. “You told me like five times.”
Jake brought up the schematic of the upper level on his wrist-buddy computer again. To get to Alpha he’d have to go through Bravo, and If Bravo module had in fact been opened to the surface years ago, he had no idea what he’d find in there. The freight elevator should open out onto the main hallway: a twenty-foot diameter tube, like a subway tunnel that ran in a rough circuit around the level as a kindof main artery.
The elevator grumbled to a halt. Nothing happened. Jacob waited and punched the ‘door open’ button. The car lurched a few inches higher, bounced a couple times and the wide doorway rolled up into the space above.
A loud ‘ding!’ sounded in the hallway to announce his arrival and he heard it echo in the quiet. Jacob ground his teeth.
The elevator hadn’t quite made it all the way; the floor of Bravo module was a foot above the floor of the elevator car. Jacob stayed hidden behind a stack of canisters and slowly drew the shotgun revolver. He slid the life-force detector forward on its strap, so it hung against his chest, easy to read with a glance down. The hologram interface gave a sortof radar-screen circle and should show blips of different color and size depending on what type of life was out there. Robots showed blue, plants yellow and any kind of animal in red.
The device pulsed. A few minor specs. Vermin, small animals. Nothing amounting to ‘oh god a swarm of carnivorous cockroaches’ size. He carefully took the step up into the tunnel. The hovering floodlight bumped along above him like a tethered balloon.
“This is the last I will be able to communicate with you until systems are repaired on this level,” Cool Breeze said from inside the elevator. “I’m going to seal this bulkhead door behind you as a precaution.”
“Very re-assuring,” Jake said.
“Don’t let the world and all future generations of humankind down,” the AI said.
No pressure, asshole, Jake thought.
He ran the atmosphere analysis app on the wrist-buddy and it spat back something it identified as normal air; no obvious airborne toxins but a number of organic molecules that could theoretically have any effect on him. And carbon particulate. You got that from smoke.
The shortest route to the access checkpoint that allowed him into Alpha module still took him around almost half the circuit of the main Bravo corridor. Jake didn’t actually care what the fastest route was, since he had already mentally decided he was doing nothing but reconnaissance on this trip. Screw Cool Breeze. He had a hard time believing how urgently the strange computer intelligence made this whole mission out to be.
No, Jake was about to do a quick recon, see how bad it was, and make a solid plan. Better than rushing in on the say-so of a twitchy AI.
The light from inside the elevator only reached so far into the corridor beyond, just enough to make out that it ended at a T intersection about 5 meters away. With a clunk of machinery, the big bulkhead door began to lower. Jake waited until the last moment and caught the annoying hoverlamp and tossed it inside the elevator. As the doors sealed the light cut off entirely. Jake struggled with his pack full of gear until he found the darkscope goggles. It took a few minutes more to rig them onto his hazmat helmet in the dark and he cursed himself for not thoroughly testing his gear before setting out. Sloppy.
He tried the goggles on and the sensor inside compensated for the low light and gave him a slightly grainy, monochrome green image of the hall, except bright as full daylight. No use announcing himself to whoever was here with a floodlight tailing behind him. He went to the intersection, looked both ways, mentally flipped a coin and chose right.
The main illuminum strips that should have lit the hallway were dark. A carpet of dirt and decaying matter covered the floor; worn down to the bare white tiles in a path down the middle of the wide hallway but towards the edges it had accreted like snowdrifts. The walls were filthy, coated in soot. And scarred by vandalism in some places. Any type of panel or grating that could have been removed was gone and showed tool marks from hammer or prybar. The place had been ransacked long ago. Hopefully whoever had looted it would have also abandoned it long ago.
That was probably wishful thinking.
He crept up the right-hand corridor; the map showed some rooms ahead. Almost immediately he was drenched in sweat, overheating inside the sealed suit. It had a mini-air conditioning unit built onto the belt but it was struggling to make a difference. At the next room he found the door had been bent and smashed inwards, allowing him to look in. Dark, unidentifiable shapes were scattered on the floor. Large, and with straight-edged angles, like furniture or boxes. The life detector showed nothing. It was like footage of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean: a room full of jumbled, broken furniture under a layer of grey dust. Abandoned. A tomb.
Jake fiddled with the darkscoper controls and the image grew so grainy and dim that there was a slight clicking from the goggles and then the image completely altered, showing a rainbow pattern of light. The goggles must have switched to infrared mode once the ambient light dropped to nothing. It took some getting used to, but different objects all emitted different levels of thermal light and he quickly preferred it to the other mode.
In the next room were big metallic pillars. The door had been completely torn off and was entirely missing. Jake took a moment, decided he had to investigate, and edged inside. The wall had some sort of shimmering heat-picture on it that the goggles were having trouble reading but Jake was curious, so he cracked the smallest of light sticks – a plastic tube the size of his finger with a cold, green-yellow bioluminescent light.
The goggles immediately switched to normal mode and Jake was startled at the image in front of him, tripping backwards a step.
The wall was covered in a ghoulish kindof painting. A huge… face? Perhaps. But it was somehow both demonic and implied it was a robot. The style was… primitive. Like cave-paintings of stickmen hunting antelope. Complete with a very human set of handprints.
But below the mural on the wall was a kind of grass bundle, brittle and dry with age, falling apart. Jake knelt to prod it with the tip of the machete, and it unravelled to reveal bones, including a very human skull.
Well… so much for the question of whether humans had survived on the surface.
He prodded the wrist buddy to life and snapped a picture for the archives. Then he looked for a route on the map to the main doors. When he plotted the course the mini-computer chirped at him.
“Mission parameters are to proceed directly to Alpha module,” it said in a friendly way, but the way it wiped his route and replaced it with a blinking orange line to the Alpha module seemed more than a little passive aggressive.
“Wrist-buddy?” he asked.
“Yes?” it said happily.
“Put the auto assist in sleep mode, you pissy little suckup.”
Grudgingly the semi-sentient computer program blinked out and he had full manual control to plot his path to the main doors. He didn’t care what Cool Breeze said, this was his mission. And the most important thing was to seal off the bunker so no more weird stuff could get in. Then he could mop up whatever was left. Once they were trapped inside with him.
He struck out through the deserted corridors. It was eerie and his bootsteps echoed in a way that made him nervous. Dark on all sides outside the limited range of his darkscope. When the goggles blinked brighter, and the image became clearer, he knew there was a natural light source nearby and he flipped the darkscopers up. There, two corridors up to the left, was a hallway that seemed to have a working lighting system. Approaching carefully, he poked around the corner. The area beyond wasn’t in nearly as rough
shape. Every third light panel seemed to work even if a couple flickered like a dying fluorescent tube. And it was less dirty. Like whatever hurricane had been through the rest of the place avoided this path.
He checked his map. It was almost as direct a route as it would be taking the main corridor. Deciding he liked avoiding the dark as much as possible, Jake entered the side hallway and slowly moved ahead.
He got about three steps down before the feeling hit him. Like fingernails on the chalkboard of his spine. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, felt himself hyperventilating and shaking. An uncontrollable urge to escape began to climb up his brainstem. God, what was it? He felt exposed. Ready to be attacked at any moment! Run!
RUN!
He actually took two steps back before the modified fight or flight reflex, they’d implanted in his clone body got a lock on the fear and clamped down. The implant biomods felt like the cool flush of a raw egg slithering down the crown of his head to his spine and then the small of his back. He wasn’t scared anymore.
What the hell? Why had he been so terrified?
A quick scan with the wrist-buddy for energy readings and he discovered a smooth oval object attached to the ceiling. Mechanical, and part of the original structure. It had a serial number and parts code and when he ran it through the wrist-buddy library he almost laughed with relief.
Nevermore brand FDY-13 fearthrower
Neuro-effective area denial device
The ‘fearthrower’ was developed by Crank and Chirk Assoc as a non-lethal alternative for secure zones. While it was field tested with the military, battlefield conditions rendered the effectiveness of limited use. While it can produce feelings of extreme terror, if subjects have no expeditious avenue of retreat the effects can result in berserk homicidal tendencies. (see footnote, large scale deployment against Bitek Dawn in the battle of Mocus 2 and the accidental friendly fire deaths of three battalions of drop marines when remotely discharged inside their own troop carrier)
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