Moments later the line crackled and went dead.
Snow fell down through the hole into the bunker, down across the giant red body of a man called Cerulean and heaping in a white pyramid that almost looked like tiny bodies interweaving, climbing one atop the other.
Snow flurried further on in thick drifts, coating the grimy floor with a pristine carpet of white and cleaning out the fog of rot, waste and suffering with fresh winter air, draining like pus from an open wound. Now the pain was over and the land could heal.
Seven miles west along a winding road through a dense forest of Douglas fir, a white panel van veered over the icy, snow-capped road. Two thin men and a woman sat cramped and shivering in the front seats, peering intently into the white fog ahead as if they could somehow divine their future from it, working the steering wheel as best they could on the slippery asphalt, while broken chains clanked at their wrists and all around rang the distant, terrifying sound of explosions, echoing like avalanches through the thick rain of white.
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
Behind them in the panel van lay a payload of groaning, moaning bodies, many of whom hadn't used their atrophied limbs in years, some of whom would likely die from the shock of disruption, others of whom would be forever crippled, and all of whom would remember the things they had endured for the rest of their lives, including the giant who had saved them and the last orders he'd given.
Go west. Warn Amo.
Further back still, miles behind but running tirelessly in a perfectly straight line through the falling snow regardless of road, forest or river, its naked skin burning and its red eyes alight, came the demon that had dreamed for eleven years of murder, thirsting only to spread its own kind across the Earth.
The snow fell over them all equally, both the living and the dead.
THE LEAST - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to perhaps my strictest advance reader, Rob, for his stream of advice and support, to PJ Lea for reading the book in just two days to offer great feedback, to Katy Page for reading it in three and Chris Hooker who read it in four and both offered great feedback too. Thanks also to all my ARC beta readers, and to all my readers- for taking a chance on my stories with their time.
- Michael
THE LOSS CONTENTS
PRESENT
PAST
FUTURE
FLIGHT
EAST
Acknowledgements
PRESENT
INTERLUDE 1
Salle Coram woke at 5am to the shrill blare of her alarm. The room was pitch black but for the small green light of her walkie charging on the side table. No light came from under the door, because all the corridors were dark these days. No light crept in through the window, because of course there were no windows in an underground bunker.
She hit the snooze button; happy they still had those, and lay motionless, luxuriating in this moment. This was about all she had, these days. A few minutes between 5am and whenever they called over with the crossover request, and her next 18-hour shift could begin.
5:05? 5:06?
She closed her eyes and tried not to think of what lay ahead. She wouldn't have slept at all, except this was going to be a long, long day, the most important day yet, and she needed to be on top form for it all.
D-day.
Her walkie rang. It too was a shrill blare, befitting her shrill life and the shrill persona she showed to everyone. She didn't need to hear the voice to know who it was, as she had all the night watches memorized. She knew at just about any moment the whereabouts of every soul under her care, wherever they were in the Habitat or Command, moving in perfect, clockwork synchrony.
This was Joseph, her second in command. Before the infection he'd been a mid-level clerk on the Judge Advocate General's legal team, bringing down corrupt officers and generals. He had no family to speak of, no addictions, no genetic disease, and his psych profile showed a strong tendency toward authoritarianism. Of course they'd selected for all of that, as a means of survival in the Command bunker. When you were locked in a featureless tin can underground for ten years, a little respect for authority went a long way.
"Joseph," she said, answering the phone with the shrillest version of her once Texan accent. "Report."
"Yes, sir," he answered sharply, like he was saluting down the line. "There's been little movement. The primary shows no signs of waking early and our agent's been asleep since around 11. The hallway are quiet, and the new one's still unconscious from whatever drug the agent put in him."
Salle breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The primary was her major concern, and its genetics were set with a perfect nuclear clock. The readout on her walkie showed the countdown, as set over ten years ago, when Lars Mecklarin and his amazing dream saw them all stowed down below.
Lars was dead now, of course. Lots of people died when the revolution rose up.
"Good," she told Joseph, "I'll be there in five."
"Yes, sir." The salute was there in his tone again. Had she slept with Joseph? She couldn't remember, though the rest of his personnel file came back to her with crystal precision. The days after the revolution, as she overthrew one flawed dictatorship for another, had been a blurry orgy of blood, liquor and sex.
She rolled off her single mattress onto the cold cement floor, set in place 11 years ago, and hit the switch on the wall with a practiced motion. A flickering white light filled the boxy room, leaving no sad little detail untouched: a few old photographs tacked to a shelf alongside three tattered fantasy books, a compass her father had given her, a Swiss Army penknife. Beneath the shelf a schedule was pinned to the wall, seven years old and pre-dating her occupancy, which she hadn't had the heart to remove. All of this was only temporary, after all.
The room was dirty white and empty other than these few mementos, carried with her in a tiny rucksack from the helicopter and into the Habitat ten years past. Back then such things had seemed important.
She brushed her teeth at the sterile sink and pulled on her smartly pressed navy blue uniform, boasting military stripes of rank on her left breast. She slipped on a pair of low black heels and looked at herself in the mirror.
37-year-old Salle Coram, the same age as Amo, Last Mayor of America. What different worlds they'd come to manage. She looked at her face; beautiful still, though it was a hollow and pale beauty now, more like a zombie than a flesh and blood Texan girl. Her curly blonde hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her cheekbones jutted out proudly like chins. Her once deep blue eyes had gone watery with all the harsh white light; even these bulbs with their ultraviolet rays couldn't do much to replace the sun.
She was ready for the world to begin again.
The control room was next to her quarters; ten steps down a freezing cement corridor with a few lights trying to blink to life as she passed, then she was through the unimpressive door and striding down the center aisle.
"Commander on deck!" Joseph called, and the space instantly spiked with salutes. Her 'deck' was a smaller, sadder version of a NASA flight control room, dimly lit with black walls and a low black ceiling designed to improve focus. A big display, torn in the corner, dominated the far wall like a movie screen, with three rows of desks and chairs arrayed before it, stocked with all her analysts.
"At ease," she said, and the room relaxed a little, though there was no denying the low buzz of excitement. Quiet voices returned to quiet conversation, fingers danced over keyboards. If it went well today, everything was finally going to change.
"Show me the hallway," she said.
"Yes, sir," Joseph barked and brought it up. Twin images resolved in a familiar split screen, and Salle took up position at her standing desk before it.
The image to the left came from a pinhead camera positioned in the ceiling above the primary's head, one of ten in a parallel array. It showed a familiar misery: emaciated bodies chained to filthy walls, pinioned at the wrists and balanced on saddles mounted to the cement,
some of them sporting nasal tubes for forced feeding. The empty stretch of wall near to the camera, which their agent had been keeping free since the beginning, was filled now with the black paraplegic.
Cerulean, Amo's people called him. He'd been an Olympic diver once. The agent had insisted on collecting him and she hadn't argued, though it saddened her to see this proud, beautiful man chained up like a slave.
The others were there as ever; 24 survivors of the apocalypse, gathered over the years, imprisoned and kept alive for today. At first it had made her sick to watch the agent prod and poke them when he was bored, just to hear them cry out. He didn't rape them too often, but that was only because they quickly grew so repellent; their limbs thinning and their spirits breaking under the constant flow of the primary's influence.
Now it just made her sad.
The image on the right showed the primary in all its glory; the demon that put the D into D-day. It was bright red, powerfully muscled and massive, standing within a glass enclosure at the head of the corridor like the star attraction at a waxworks. It had no ears or nose to speak of, only holes cut into the smooth red oval of its head. Its mouth hung open in sleep, a black and terrifying hole. No sexual organs lay between its legs, only smooth red flesh.
"Vitals?" she asked.
One of her analysts snapped a button and the primary's infographics popped up on the side of the screen. It was in a deep-wave state, with a strong pulse and lively spinal brain activity. Dreaming.
Salle settled in to position, bringing up her crossover packet with a touch on the screen. There was nothing she could do now but wait.
* * *
D-day began right on schedule at two in the afternoon.
For the thirty minutes before that she had to listen to the paraplegic talking to her agent. She knew all about the grudge between them, but didn't care; what mattered was the primary. Its vitals were changing for the first time in ten years. It was waking up.
"Show me the aerial view," she ordered.
A fresh window appeared over the other two, shot from a down-facing camera mounted to one of their three remaining drones. It was circling at 10,000 feet, and through its eye the white Maine countryside was rendered like a splodge of spilled ice cream on gray asphalt, with snowy fields and forests contained by the rise of Mt. Abraham to the east, Mt. Spaulding to the north and assorted foothills to the west.
"Zoom," she said.
Snow was falling, obscuring the view. The barometer on the screen was showing a steep drop-off signaling an imminent snowstorm. The temperature was down to minus fifteen; cold enough the agent had switched on several heaters along the hallway.
The view contracted and focused, with a barely perceptible drift from the gliding drone. The field where the demon was located, in its own private bunker where once the sentinel gun and comms tower had stood until her agent blew it up, grew larger. Fresh snow had filled in the agent's footsteps and the trail he'd dug dragging the paraplegic over. The hole into the bunker itself was a black speck, sealed with a manhole. The primary underground was marked out by a flashing blue dot, showing the genetic tracker in its system was working well.
"It's moving," Joseph called, from his screen nearby.
The drone view peeled away and the screen filled again with the twin views of the hallway. Salle stared as the primary, so long-awaited, opened its eyes for the first time. They were red with sharp black pupils.
"Wow," somebody said in the hall.
The agent was on his knees before the glass door with arms raised, like he was praying. That was a trick she'd used in the early days, to get him on her side. Nearby the black guy was struggling against his chains. The primary's infographics on the side of the screen began to shift into territory they'd never seen before; core temperature rising rapidly, spinal brainwaves spiking up, spillover magnetic effects growing strong enough to spin any nearby compasses madly.
The prisoners in the hallway, all except the paraplegic, stopped struggling and stared as it woke. The agent was babbling some nonsense. Salle hardly dared breathe as the primary lifted its arms and legs from their rests and took its first step up to the glass door that had contained it for so long. Tears welled in her eyes. This meant freedom for all her broken people. This made all the horror and sacrifice worth it.
It pressed its palms against the glass, the lock clicked and the door slowly ground open. The agent's babbling became screams as the primary stepped above him, seized his little face in its giant hands, and squeezed his jaw open.
"Here it comes," one of her top drone pilots muttered.
The primary leaned in, fastened its black hole of a mouth over the agent's lower face, and began to vomit with a rough coughing sound.
"Holy shit," someone said.
"Oh my God," said somebody else.
The agent's body flapped like a balloon figure outside a car dealership, bucking and flicking as hot air filled him. His legs spasmed, his chest heaved and then he was dropped to the ground.
Not a soul in the control room moved.
"Commander," Joseph murmured uncertainly. She didn't need to reply. Somebody in the corner puked noisily, caught it in a waste bin and scurried out.
The agent lay on the cement flopping. The primary straightened up and moved on. It was horrific, no doubt, but this was what they'd been building to. This was hardly worse than the deaths of billions.
The primary moved to the paraplegic, who tried in vain to pull his face away, but it wrapped up his head, squeezed so tightly that his jaw cracked open, then pressed its black mouth over his in a gross parody of a kiss.
"I can't watch this," somebody said and ran down the aisle, gagging. Others groaned. Salle marked their names and watched as the primary vomited again. She'd known for years how it would infect others, but she'd never expected it to be quite so repulsive.
In the corner, the agent had stopped kicking. Now he was growing.
"I wish we had monitors in him too," Joseph said, and Salle turned to him. He was pale and sweating but professional. He noticed her looking. "Amazing data."
The vomiting cough started again, and the paraplegic's body convulsed in its chains. Salle forced herself to watch. This was the price and she paid it gladly. Behind the demon the agent's arms and legs were elongating, his skin was turning pink and his muscles swelled like squash growing in one of the farm halls.
"Where does the mass come from?" Joseph said quietly. "It's phenomenal."
More people were gagging now. She marked their names. The vomiting halted and the paraplegic hung slack on his chains, with his belly distended like he was pregnant. Salle almost gagged too but choked it back.
"The primary," she said quietly to Joseph, "he weighs nearly three tons. Mostly it's the incredibly dense infection cells stored in his gut. He's like a pressurized canister full of virus."
Speaking helped; made her feel some element of control in an affair that was now completely out of her control. Joseph nodded and watched with fascination and disgust as the demon moved on.
The agent had almost doubled in size already. The paraplegic was growing too. A brittle clank signaled his chains snapping, followed by a thump as he dropped to his knees on the floor. Not a paraplegic anymore. Beside him the agent rose to his feet. He was nearly as tall as the primary now.
"Do you have him?" Salle called.
The top-down drone view appeared again above the hallway scene. It was snowing thickly now, and the black speck of the bunker's manhole was completely obscured, but there were two flashing blue dots near the center. That meant the genetic tracker in the primary had transferred successfully.
"We got him," the drone pilot answered, and a cheer went up.
They were on their way out.
Then a grunting sound came from the hallway behind the drone overlay, along with a sudden movement of red at the edge of the screen. Salle leaned forward on her desk, accidentally pushing the live microphone button.
"What was that?" she dema
nded of the control room. "Somebody explain to me what just happened."
The drone view snapped away, and in the hallway beneath it she could see the agent-demon was looking at the paraplegic-demon. But they shouldn't be doing that. Like ants, she'd read, but then ants didn't…
Salle turned. "Joseph?"
He was paler than before. "Looked like a throw. A judo throw, over his shoulder." He gulped. "Like a fight."
She whirled back. The primary was still vomiting his way up the hallway, ignorant of whatever his secondaries were doing behind him. The paraplegic was holding the agent by the arms, looking into his eyes. It was impossible.
Then the paraplegic spoke. Salle stared. That was certainly impossible, not with all the tremendous changes taking over his nervous system. Yet the microphones caught it, and everyone in the control room heard it.
"I know you're in there," he went.
There was nothing Salle could do but watch, until the agent replied with a gruff bark. "Cerulean?"
Salle lost it. "What the hell is happening?" she shouted. Then the paraplegic dived.
His shoulder crunched into the agent's middle and drove him back against the tall glass door, where he lifted him up then slammed him into the ground. Salle gasped. In a second the paraplegic had straddled the bigger agent like it was a cage match, and was punching him in the face. Another second later he rolled sideways so his arms were wrapped around the agent's head, his thick legs were coiled around his neck, and he pulled.
"He's not supposed to be doing that," Salle said, absent her usual authority, more like a lost child than anything. "That's not supposed to happen."
There was a ripping sound, a scream, then the agent's newly grown head tore away from his body. Priceless infection cells sprayed from his torn neck.
"Oh my God," Salle said, looking from the bloody paraplegic and on to the primary. It hadn't even noticed; wasn't doing anything but strolling along and puking into the next. Everything could end right here…
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 58
