by A. T. Avon
Somewhere in the Gobi
She felt her mouth close. She froze, too terrified to move or say a word in case it provoked him.
There was a half second, then she heard it. It was somehow louder even than the shot which had killed her father.
There was no way he could’ve missed. And yet there was no pain.
Her eyes were clamped shut, though she had no recollection of closing them. She heard another shot, then another, and only after this fourth explosion of sound stopped echoing in the cramped control room did she acknowledge her own confusion.
How was she hearing anything?
She was dead, wasn’t she?
She opened her eyes and was amazed to find Tang lying on his back, two bullet wounds in his chest. She looked to the armed guards, but one of them was dead too. He was on his side, leaking blood from a wound somewhere near his shoulder. His face was completely expressionless, the face of a dead man.
The remaining guard had his assault rifle up. He was aiming it at West. West was aiming a handgun straight back at him, the two of them locked in some kind of stand-off. ‘Everyone stay calm,’ said West slowly, ‘we’re going to lower these guns now, because no one else needs to get hurt here.’
Some of the tension drained out of the guard’s body. His shoulders sagged slightly and he swallowed hard, nodding. He started lowering his rifle.
West shot him in the neck.
Chapter 24
Somewhere in the Gobi
After shooting the second guard, West took his time. He turned and calmly shot all but one of the remaining techs.
He shook his head. ‘What a fucking mess,’ he said, holstering his handgun. He thought for a moment, then pointed to the dead Tang. ‘The plan he came up with wasn’t bad, given the circumstances. The plan stays the same. Houellebecq, you’ll come with me. Take the rifle from the guy I just shot there. Missy, you take the other pistol over there. We’ll ride the train out to the air base and blow the dam.’
‘All of us?’ Missy asked, her eyes on her father.
‘No,’ said West. ‘Missy, Missy – focus – you’ll stay here. We’re going to need someone on the inside to help us get back in when this is done, otherwise we’ll be trapped out there when the hordes arrive. Okay, you clear? Tang’s soldiers don’t know about this. Let’s keep it that way. Tang’s given orders for a train to run out to the air base, so we’ll be on that. Houellebecq, you okay? You, me, plenty of plastic explosives. Let’s get this done.’
‘I can’t,’ said Houellebecq.
‘You can’t?’
‘I have to get Kilgariff out.’
‘She’s dead,’ said West. ‘You have to stay focused on the real ballgame here, Houellebecq. I need help and you’re it.’
‘No. I’m going to free Kilgariff.’
‘The fuck you will.’ West grabbed him by his collar. He took out the pistol again and used it to point at Tang. ‘See that? That’s my boss, that’s my pay-check right there, covered in blood.’ He tapped the muzzle of the pistol into Houellebecq’s chest. ‘You owe me.’
‘I didn’t tell you to do that.’
‘No, but I did it. He shot your father, and he was going to shoot your sister. You think he was going to spare you? He’d decided he didn’t need you anymore.’
Missy could see the logic in this. ‘I’ll go to Kilgariff,’ she said.
West shoved Houellebecq aside, exasperated now. ‘No. You’ll stay in here and make sure no one enters this control room. If anyone finds this mess, we’re all dead. And you’ll be here to let us in when we get back, because it’s not just my life, it’s your brother’s, too. Got it?’
Missy nodded. She could see there was no use arguing. She understood now. ‘That’s why you want Houellebecq.’
‘Collateral,’ said West, nodding. ‘Now let’s move, while there’s still time.’
Chapter 25
Somewhere in the Gobi
West led Houellebecq down onto the train platform beneath the facility. The train was overkill. It had been designed for a great many more benefactors than it would serve today. In fact, of the benefactors taking refuge at the facility, so far only 29 had shown up for evacuation: a few elderly white men, even more elderly white women, and then four or five families. West counted fourteen children in all, some so young they were playing with toys, others teenagers with headphones in.
The train had three carriages. West led Houellebecq into the last carriage. The interior was perfectly ordinary: rows of comfortable seats, exactly as one would expect to find in a high-speed train in Japan or China.
West indicated for Houellebecq to sit on one side, while he dropped down on the other. They had stopped for armaments on the way down to the train, and they now had assault rifles, along with spare ammunition, a collection of hand grenades and all the plastic explosives they could carry. It wasn’t much, but it was all West had access to at such short notice.
No one chose their carriage.
People kept quietly boarding the train, until the electronic information on the platform flipped over to a final countdown. A voice warned of a pending departure in a variety of languages.
‘Thanks,’ said Houellebecq out of the blue, from over on the other side of the aisle.
‘For?’
‘The control room. For turning on Tang like that. I don’t think I actually said thank you but… yeah, having had time to think, thank you. And for this.’
West just nodded and looked out the window, even though there was nothing to look at except the inside of an underground tunnel. He didn’t feel much like talking. Truth be told, he was confused by his actions.
Had he done the right thing, killing Tang? Maybe, maybe not. All his life, he had been a pragmatist. He had joined the military not because of any great love for his home nation, Britain, but because it promised to give him a range of skills he could leverage elsewhere.
Now he was here, leveraging.
This wasn’t what he had imagined for himself, sitting on a train like this, waiting for alarms to sound – waiting for guards to board and haul him away. He had been making good money, too. Really good money. That was over now.
He consoled himself with the fact it didn’t matter. The world was over, most likely. This substance had the upper hand. That much was clear. And West didn’t see it letting up. He was humbled by this. He had always struggled to believe the substance was capable of much, had always dismissed it as less of a threat than Tang made it out to be. There had been large swathes of time where West didn’t even believe it was alien, convinced Tang had pulled off one of the greatest Ponzi schemes in history. But it wasn’t a scheme. The virus had spread with an effectiveness that had impressed West. It was a killing machine, plain and simple. It recognized only strength, and even then only when it could put that strength to use. In many ways, it was a lot like him. Just better.
He felt the train jolt and start forward. At first, the wall of the tunnel crawled by, but it sped up and soon it was a blur. The trip would take less than five minutes, and there was no way to be sure what exactly they were heading into. For all he knew, they were already too late, the air base overrun.
He checked and rechecked his weapon. At least he had an assault rifle and grenades, unlike most on this train. Better that than toys and headphones.
Chapter 26
Somewhere in the Gobi
Missy crouched over her father’s body, unable to believe he was dead. She had searched so long for this man, and finding him she had believed she’d have a long time to work through everything. She had been wrong about all of it. And now she was alone again, abandoned by her brother, by the whole world.
She was stroking her father’s face when she noticed something odd. The stump of her finger was growing back. She held it up and examined it, but there was no doubt: it was longer.
She was reminded of a documentary she had once seen about a lizard. Had it been the salamander? Something like that. Or maybe it wasn’t even a documentary. May
be it had just been some clip on YouTube. Either way, she remembered being amazed at the way in which the injured salamander had regrown an entire leg. It hadn’t been like this, like her – it had been slow. She seemed to remember it taking a year. But at the end of that year, the salamander had a perfectly formed leg at its disposal again.
It made sense. For all she knew, it was the salamander’s exact DNA, blended with her own, that was enabling her to regrow now. The substance was capable of that, she now knew. It was always testing, failing, testing again, always pushing forward on its inexorable march to… what? She didn’t know. Some kind of perfectly adapted species, perhaps. Or was it as her father had suggested? Was the substance benevolent?
She had a feeling she would never find out. She was relatively certain now that she would die before getting all the answers, just as her father had. She had the unshakable feeling time was running out.
She stood and turned back to the one tech West had spared. Previously, she had been the only female tech in the room. Now she was the only other person in the room.
‘Do you know where the vault is?’ she asked.
The woman was young and slight, Asian. She nodded rapidly. ‘So you speak English?’
The woman nodded again.
‘Okay, walk me through it. What would I need – to get into the vault. What exactly would it take?’
The woman answered her clearly, with a slight hint of a European accent Missy couldn’t immediately place. ‘It depends,’ she said. ‘It has two modes. For a normal lock, the mode it’s in now, authorized personnel can get in with a card, a retina scan and a fingerprint. That’s how it works for all high-security gateways in this facility. The vault is no different.’
‘And in its other mode?’
‘The vault can be locked permanently. In effect, it’s been designed in such a way it can weld itself shut. It’s not quite that simple, but –’
‘I get the idea,’ said Missy. ‘But it’s in the first mode now, yeah? So theoretically, Tang here, assuming he wasn’t dead, he’d be able to use his card, his fingerprint and a retina scan to get inside?’
The woman nodded.
Missy stood and searched one of the dead guards. She quickly found what she was looking for: a large hunting knife. She unsheathed it and wasted no time cutting a finger from Tang’s hand. ‘Finger for a finger,’ she grunted, before rolling him and starting on one of his eyes. ‘Eye for a… well, because fuck you.’
It was much harder getting the eye out. She had to get the tech to help her. Missy needed her help because, one way or another, she wasn’t putting down the pistol in her left hand. Now that she could roam this facility armed, she would roam this facility armed. She had been a prisoner since the day she first arrived. Houellebecq, too. Even her father had been a prisoner. But now, thanks to West, things had turned on a dime. Now she had a chance to go anywhere she wanted, without minders suddenly appearing.
She planned to make use of this new freedom. She would save Kilgariff from the vault and make her way back here before Houellebecq and West returned. She owed Kilgariff that much.
Hell, she owed Houellebecq that much – lying asshole that he was.
‘Can you set off an alarm, dispatch soldiers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then do it. Keep them away from this control room and clear a path for us both to the vault.’
When she had the finger and the eye, she stood again. The eye had sagged down. She hadn’t done a very good job of getting it out. She’d burst it. But she didn’t think she would have any more luck with the other eye and time was of the essence. ‘I’m going to the vault,’ she said to the tech. ‘You’ve got two choices. You can help me find it, help me get inside, or I can shoot you now.’
The tech swallowed hard.
‘Really?’ said Missy. ‘You need to think about that one?’
She shook her head frantically. ‘I’m nervous. I’ve – I never – I’d like to help you, yes.’
‘And another thing,’ Missy said.
‘What?’
‘I’m going to need water. I’m going to need a lot of water.’
Chapter 27
Somewhere in the Gobi
The train slid into the station at the air base.
Houellebecq followed West out of the train carriage and up an escalator. He emerged into what looked to be a military aircraft hangar. There was a long line of enormous black helicopters, each facing a custom-built door. Soldiers were busily preparing these helicopters for departure and they showed no interest in the motley assortment of newcomers now arriving from the train.
This unnerved Houellebecq. The people coming up from the train were amongst the wealthiest and most influential in the world, yet the soldiers wouldn’t allow themselves to be diverted?
Their mission, whatever it was, was racing an unseen clock.
A sudden shaft of light cut across the gloomy hangar, and for a moment Houellebecq couldn’t place its origin. Eventually, he found it. Something had punched a hole in one of the hanger’s aluminum doors. Only a handful of the soldiers noticed, but those who did stopped preparing helicopters and took up defensive postures, aiming their assault rifles at the doors.
‘We’re too late to blow the dam,’ said West. ‘There are already here.’
He was right. Houellebecq could hear them now, striking the building, climbing up its sides. He could hear them moving onto the roof, then across it. It sounded like there were thousands of them, moving around and across this enormous hangar.
West started shouting instructions to the soldiers, warning them not to open the doors. ‘Any attempt to roll out the helicopters is futile now. We defend. Got it? We defend.’
‘Can’t we ride the train back?’
‘No. Tang ordered for it to stay here.’
Houellebecq didn’t know what to do. He staggered backward, scanning the surrounding hangar. He raised his assault rifle, ignoring the panic spreading through the other train passengers.
No targets – yet.
He started towards the opposite side of the building – away from the helicopters. There were fewer people over here, though the noise outside was no less deafening. He scanned left to right, walking in a crouch, rifle up, and continually made a point of checking overhead.
Defend, he thought.
Defend.
He had assumed West would follow, but West was still working in with the soldiers, giving them orders and encouragement. Nothing had breached the building yet, but everyone could feel it coming.
Houellebecq heard what sounded like nails on the metal outside. He could hear screeching and anguished cries.
He reached a small doorway and hesitated. He felt like he needed to see what was going on outside, so he could relay accurate information to West. But did he really want to open a door right now?
No.
He retreated slightly, and when he heard zombies working at this same door he opened fire.
The scratching at the door stopped.
Then it started up again.
He saw claws slide in and begin to pull at it.
‘They’re coming,’ he yelled. ‘Over here.’
But other soldiers were yelling now, too.
Maybe he could do his bit by defending this door? No one else was watching it, so that left him. He couldn’t defend the entire hangar, but he could watch this one door.
It was oddly comforting to have a job, a role.
He summoned the courage to ease up towards the door. He fired again, six rounds in all, causing the claws to vanish.
Then he waited.
To Houellebecq’s amazement, something pulled the door clean off the building. Zombies flooded in, and Houellebecq immediately found himself surrounded by the infected. They were everywhere, pushing past him, teeth bared, swarming the building with the force of a thousand rhinos.
He fired at the ones directly in front of him and immediately tried to retreat back, but the only gap was forwar
d. He managed to slip through the door, stumbling out into daylight, and seven or eight zombies lunged at him. At first, he thought they were coming for him. He almost welcomed it. It was going to happen, so hopefully it’d be quick, painless. But they didn’t attack him. Like all the others, they moved around him, slipping through the door and disappearing into the gloomy hangar.
There was no way to survive it, yet Houellebecq was surviving it.
He had a feeling he knew why, too.
He was infected. He was invisible.
He thought back to his father’s words in the control room.
As it should be, as it should be…
He cleared the edge of the building and the dam fell into view. What he saw caused him to catch his breath. The zombies were drinking, thousands of them on their haunches, cupping water, slurping at their hands. They were clothed, but some of their clothing was burnt or torn. Often, their hair was thin and wispy, their skin leathery, but some looked like he did.
All from the same nest? He doubted it, but it was possible. They were all Asian, so possibly from some enormous nest in a city on the edge of the desert. They had mutated, that much was clear. They had all made use of the same version of the substance, and now they were on the move looking for… what?
Kilgariff? Was all this part of a herculean effort to shut down the dome?
He watched as they cupped water and drank it greedily. He watched as others, in their desperation to drink, fell forward into the water, slapping ineffectually before finding their footing in the shallow mud and drinking. Yet more zombies streamed past him, flooding into the hangar.
Houellebecq had undermined the security of the hanger. He hadn’t done it deliberately. He had believed he would be able to come out here, take a quick look, turn around and head back inside.
He had underestimated the sheer number, the sheer strength…
He looked back at the hangar. They coated the building like enraged wasps now, no doubt finding entry through countless other routes. He thought of West. Whatever he thought of West, he owed the man. He doubted there was anything he would be able to do, but he turned and headed back inside.
