by Drew Brown
The soldier ignored them.
“Mister Ashby, you must come now. The rest of you sit down and stay where you are. I’ll shoot anyone who leaves this room. Am I understood?”
Budd listened as the crowd behind him shuffled away, their footsteps retreating into the shadows. “Where’s Juliette?”
“Come with me, Mister Ashby.”
Budd stood firm. “Where’s Juliette?”
In answer to the defiance, Bogey simply raised his aim so that the darkened muzzle was pointed between Budd’s eyes. “Please, Mister Ashby, come with me now.”
Budd held up his hands. “Okay, Snotty, but I’m running outta patience. You got that, buddy?”
The soldier backed off down the tight corridor, which was fifteen feet long and had two wooden doors on either side. At the end was a set of steps that led up to an open hatch. Gray light flooded in. The soldier stopped outside the second door on the right, knocked twice and then turned the handle. The door opened quietly. “Go inside,” Bogey said. “I’ll wait right here.”
Budd entered the room, apprehensive as to what he would find. The small cabin was lit by three portholes positioned along the wall opposite the door and by an exposed light bulb that hung down from the center of the ceiling, swinging with the boat’s gentle roll.
For a moment, Budd couldn’t see anything as his eyes adjusted to the brighter light. He blinked away the worst of the blurring and saw that the cabin contained little more than a desk. Sitting behind it, in a large leather chair, was the man who’d claimed to be Charles Deacon. He had his hands behind his head and a smile on his face.
The likeness was incredible.
The structure of the face was exactly as Budd remembered it from their shared flight from Hope Island only two days before, as was the gray color of his irises; but the person sitting behind the desk was older, with shallow wrinkles around the corners of his mouth and eyes. His hair was a darker shade and a little thinner in volume. It wasn’t Charles Deacon, but it could certainly have been a close relation.
Not that, to tell you the truth, I was really that interested in the family tree or crazy babblings of some science geek look-a-like. I had only one thing on my mind…
“Where’s Juliette?”
The man behind the desk pointed to his left, indicating to a door that Budd hadn’t noticed.
Without another word, Budd went and opened it. He heard the chair creak on the wooden floor as the man moved to stand up and follow.
Budd stepped into the new cabin.
It was very small; nothing more than simple sleeping quarters; its only piece of furniture, a narrow bed, occupied half of the available floor space. There was a single porthole for light.
Juliette was laid upon the white bed sheets, sprawled out on her back. Budd knelt at her side and touched her face, running his fingers over her soft skin. “It’s okay, sweetheart, I’m here.”
She did not respond, and Budd’s relief at finding her evaporated as soon as his eyes moved away from her face. Her black leather jacket had been removed, revealing her long-sleeved red T-shirt, the left arm of which had been rolled up to her elbow. A white bandage covered the hand beneath. Aside from that wound, he saw no sign of any other injury. Even so, he found cause for anger to well up inside of him and he spun around to confront the man who’d stepped out from behind the desk.
“Why’d you tie her down?” Budd questioned, pointing at a 4-inch wide strap that was wrapped around the top of Juliette’s chest and the bed, keeping her flat on her back. There were two other straps, one at her waist which also kept her hands secured at her sides, and one around her ankles. There was no way she could move.
The man smiled benevolently. “For her own good, of course.”
Budd grabbed the man around his neck and lifted him from the floor. “I know she’s bitten, but I’ve seen how long it takes; there’s time for her to be free. She’s not an animal.”
The man’s feet knocked against the doorframe and walls, and his hands pulled fruitlessly at Budd’s wrists. He struggled to speak.
“Saving her,” were the only two words Budd understood among the gasps for air. They intrigued him enough to set the man back on the cabin floor, but not until his face had turned red and his eyes were watering.
Coughing and spluttering, the man sunk to his knees, his hands massaging his throat. Budd turned back to Juliette and touched her face a second time. She still did not stir, but her skin was warm, almost hot. Budd looked at the strap and then started to undo the buckle that held it in place.
“Leave it,” the man hissed.
Juliette’s body twitched, her head tilting backwards as she inhaled sharply.
Budd’s hands withdrew from the buckle. He watched as her entire body contorted. She strained against the straps and then relaxed, only for the whole process to start again. Her breathing increased, the air audibly hurtling up and down her throat. Sweat poured from her brow, and when he tried to grasp her hand, Budd found that her skin was slick with perspiration. She screamed, almost a gasp of exhaled air, and then she was perfectly still, as if she was sleeping.
“What’s happening to her?”
The man behind Budd was back on his feet; he placed his hand on Budd’s shoulder and pulled him away from Juliette. “You are right; she was bitten. But she will be fine. You have my word.”
Budd shook his head with incomprehension.
“I promise you, William. She will be fine. Now, come with me,” the man said, stepping into the other cabin and returning to the leather chair.
Budd was reluctant to leave Juliette’s side, but the man gestured for him to follow; with a final glance down at her face, his fingertips stealing a lingering touch upon the damp skin of her hand, he did as he was asked.
“Close the door behind you, William. Your friend will need plenty of rest.”
Budd pulled the door shut. There was a small stool in the corner of the room, behind the door to the corridor. He took the few steps he needed to reach it and sat down, his eyes focusing on the man behind the desk.
“What’s the deal, buddy? Who are you?”
The man smiled. He rubbed his throat, which was covered by the red imprints of Budd’s hands. When he spoke his voice had a slight croak. “I have told you already. I’m Charles Deacon. You remember me, don’t you, William?”
“I remember Charles Deacon, I saw him two days ago. And he doesn’t look like you. Well, not exactly.”
“But you don’t deny that I bear an uncanny resemblance to the man in question?”
“Mister, you could be his older brother. Dress me in a tutu and I’d look like a ballerina; it still don’t mean I can dance.”
“I’m afraid that I don’t have any older brothers, only a younger sister,” the man said, his eyebrows lifting up thoughtfully, “who is now deceased, I rather expect. She never was that adventurous.”
Budd folded his arms across his chest. “Look, pal, I’m really not in the mood for all this waffle. Cut to the chase, would you? Who are you? Because, whatever you say, I was with Charles Deacon the day before yesterday, and you’re not him. So you’d better start explaining. What is it you want from me?”
The man chuckled and reached beneath the desk. He took hold of an object and brought it up into view. “All in good time,” he said. “First, let me show you this.”
Just for a second, the coward in me imagined the whole thing to be an elaborate trap. But there was nothing to suggest that. Well, apart from the handcuffs, that bimbo who’d been executed, and the way we’d all been treated like prisoners, bossed around and kept in the dark.
But the soldiers had also helped us survive—some of us, anyway—and they’d done so at the cost of several of their own people.
Let’s face it; with the best will in the world, we would’ve never managed to flee the hotel as far as we had alone. So I figured I owed them at least a little trust. Not much, though—for me, it’s a limited commodity…
The m
an straightened in his chair and placed the briefcase he’d been carrying throughout the day on the desk. He turned it to face Budd and then flipped the catches sideways so that they disengaged. Slowly, he opened the briefcase, revealing a mauve-coloured foam interior that had two rows of twelve grooves cut into it. Most of the slots were empty. Only two of them had hypodermic needles tucked inside them, their glass bodies filled with a liquid that looked like blood.
“So what?” Budd said with a dismissive shrug of his shoulders. “They’re needles. Cut to the chase already.”
“I am,” the man said with a casual smile. “I used one of these to save the life of the woman next door. The convulsions you witnessed were part of the healing process. She’ll be as right as rain.”
“What is it, then?” Budd asked. “What’s in those things?”
“A highly concentrated form of adrenaline and a balance of different hormones, nothing that can’t be produced by the human body; although these doses are much stronger than can be achieved by natural means.”
“Huh?”
The man closed the briefcase and placed it back underneath the desk. “With older subjects there is a chance the heart will give out during the first few minutes after the dosage is administered; but the girl is young, fit, and healthy. Unless she has some underlying medical condition, she’ll come through it without any cause for concern. And, as you so rightly put it, she was infected and, therefore, already as good as dead. So, it was a chance worth taking.”
Budd looked at the man’s face, into his eyes. “There was a girl, at the hotel. She’d been bitten. One of the soldiers shot her. He said there was no cure.”
“As you saw, I have a very small supply left. Just two more doses. After they are gone, there is no more. Anywhere. So I have to be very selective in whom I attempt to save. I chose this girl because you appear to be fond of her, and I need you to trust me. In short, William, I need your help.”
I wish I’d said the first thing that popped into my head.
Blow me...
“Three questions. Who are you? What the hell do you want with me? And what are those things?”
Behind the desk, the man sighed. “William Ashby, or Budd, as you like to be known, you flew me from the airbase at Hope Island. The weather was bad and you were reluctant to fly. We landed here in Britain, on the afternoon of what you would consider to be the day before yesterday. When I could find no one else to take me on the final part of my journey, I convinced you to chauffeur me to the New Millennium Hotel, where we parted company.”
Budd nodded. “So far, so good. But I could’ve told you that.”
“Patience, William. For me, the day we parted in the foyer was just short of eleven years ago. During our flight, you asked me what it was that we were researching. If you remember, William, I told you it was time travel.”
Budd shook his head. “Hokum,” he said. “Come on, you can do better than that. You’re trying to tell me you’re from the future?”
“You said it yourself, Mister Ashby; I do look like an older version of the Charles Deacon you knew. That is simply because I am the older version of Charles Deacon. I’m Charles Deacon after his thirty-fifth birthday, not the man in his mid-twenties with whom you were acquainted.”
“And, you’re from the future,” Budd said with a smile on his face. “Sorry, pal, but I think you’re yankin’ my chain.”
“I am from a possible future, not the only one,” the man said carefully. He looked at Budd with an odd expression, as if deep in thought, pondering some strange, bewildering question. “Since we parted, you’ve seen the vast majority of the population collapse and die, only to stand back up and attack the living. They’ve changed from moving slowly and acting with no measurable intelligence into fast, athletic beings that give chase in a frenzied state, moving at the quickest speed their human bodies could achieve. Soon, perhaps already, they will start to evolve again; they will start to think and to act upon their thoughts rather than merely their impulses. You have witnessed all of this, but you still believe that I am lying to you? Even when you have seen the evidence first hand? William, I am Charles Deacon.”
Budd said nothing.
I remembered the one-eyed boy-beast that’d attacked us as we’d left the underground—the one that’d been trying to dodge my goddamn bullets.
Unlike the other monsters that’d run mindlessly into the path of the machine guns, this one fast-mover, although still desiring nothing more than to tear us limb from limb—I sure don’t think he wanted a hug—had sought to survive the confrontation. The memory of the incident went some way to corroborating the wannabe-Deacon’s story: if he could predict the evolution of the infected, then, perhaps—nah, I still couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that he was Charles Deacon, come back from the future.
I guess, however, that I was a touch more open-minded…
“If you’re from the future, tell me what’s happened. What are these things?”
“Before I explain to you what’s happening now, I must tell you what would’ve happened, what events took place on the timeline that I lived through. You will see that things have sadly changed.”
Budd took a deep breath. “Go on, then. Explain away.”
4
“It’s hard to know where to begin.”
“Try the start.”
“Eight years from now, astronomers spotted a previously uncharted comet that was on a trajectory that would bring it very close to the Earth. When it was first seen, the comet was about fifteen months away, but as time moved on people began to speculate that its path would lead it into a direct collision with our planet. The problem was that the comet was very unstable and difficult to predict. Others debated the calculations, claiming that it would be nothing more than a near miss. They were wrong: with the world holding its breath, the comet entered our atmosphere and landed in the remotest part of inner China.”
“How big was—is—this comet?” Budd asked quietly.
My knowledge of aerodynamics is sufficient for me to understand concepts like displacement. If something big struck the Earth, the planet could be knocked out of the Sun’s orbit, which would quickly bring about some pretty bad news for all those involved.
We’d either be massively too hot and slapping on the sun block, or we’d be impossibly cold and the long-john manufacturing industry would finally be worth having shares in. For a while, anyway. Ultimately, whatever way we went, mankind would soon be hangin’ out with the dodo…
Behind his desk, Charles Deacon smiled. “Had it been rock, no one would have survived.”
“So, it was something else?”
Deacon nodded. “Yes, mainly ice and trapped gas; most of its volume and weight was dispersed when it entered our atmosphere. Mankind was lucky, the world rejoiced, and amid plans for countries to join forces and begin work on some sort of interstellar defense project, life started to return to normal.”
“But…”
“Yes, William, there is a ‘but’. It took several days for the first reports to appear. The scientists investigating the crash site, as well as the local rural population, were struck down with an unknown illness. No firm news came out of the region; a strange fog had settled over the area and interrupted radio and satellite communications. Gradually, the fog spread outwards.”
“The fog?” Budd asked, his eyes drifting up to the three portholes behind the desk. The gray light of the distant sun passing through the ground-hugging cloud proved it was as thick and towering as ever. “You mean like what’s over London?”
“From the safety of the developed world, scientists speculated that the illness was caused by a type of radiation, and that the fog had been produced by the comet’s ice melting in our atmosphere and falling down to Earth.
“Of course, none of this could be proved, as no one returned from the scene. By the time the outskirts of the fog, seemingly moving without heed of the wind direction, reached Beijing, anyone with money had gone, an
d even the poor were spilling onto the roads, trying to walk to safety. Fear brought the world’s transport system to a halt. Air travel from China was banned, and the countries around her closed their borders.
“As diplomatic relations broke down, both India and Russia used force to protect themselves; they fought fierce battles with Chinese refugees. None of it did any good, however. The illness soon outstripped the fog, spreading across the globe, although in the more developed countries it was largely contained to small outbreaks that were quickly eradicated.”
“ ‘Eradicated?’ ”
“The people were killed, as was anyone suspected of being exposed. Entire towns were massacred, the populations sanitized with gas and flames.”
Right then, I had a twisting of nerves in my stomach.
Surely, what this loon was telling me couldn’t be the future. Could it? A future just years away? The comet was one thing, but would our caring governments allow the world to fall apart and come to violence over the matter? You, I, everyone from the so-called civilized society would probably say no.
Except, when I thought about what I’d witnessed in the last few days, about the thick fog that covered London and the horrors that roamed within it, I could imagine how frightened some slimy politicians would be getting, tucked up safe in their guarded bunkers. Would they permit acts of barbarism to try and save their own skins? I’ll let you ponder it, but, for the record, my palms were beginning to sweat—I don’t even trust dead politicians, just look at what a mess people have made trying to follow Marx…
“This illness; what did it do?”
“You’ve seen it, William.”
“The zombie-things?”
“To reach its fullest form, the virus takes between sixty and seventy hours. The exact progress is dictated by the strength of the person; the weak are consumed the quickest. Upon initial infection the subject will collapse, almost instantly, and sink into a deep coma-like state, often mistaken for death. This lasts, perhaps, six to eight hours, depending upon the subject. After this, the infected will rise to their feet, unsteadily at first. Despite the movement, however, they have lost their higher-brain functions; there is no intellect, merely instinct and the desire to feed.”
