by A. T. Avon
He found the zombies closing in on the uninfected. West was amongst them, holding back benefactors as he waved his assault rifle at the zombies. There was a thick ring of them closing in, exactly as the rats had done in Missy’s experiment. The zombies were acting on instinct, steadily closing the circle on their prey, snarling, teeth bared.
West half-lowered his assault rifle. It was a hopeless situation and he finally seemed to realize it.
It had been hopeless since the moment they first arrived. They had been too late. It was that simple.
The attack, when it finally came, was fast and utterly merciless. West and the other soldiers opened fire and rolled a few grenades, causing Houellebecq to drop flat to his stomach; but it made no difference. They were soon overrun, and it was as it had been long ago in the RV with Missy. Zombies shifted color, even shape, evading detection only to reappear and stab with bone that protruded from rotten flash. Their strength was incredible, their bite brutal. Still lying flat on his stomach, Houellebecq watched as they lifted people up and threw them into one another with crushing force, handling them as if they were no heavier than dolls. He watched them tear away flesh with their teeth and greedily slurp blood from the concrete underfoot.
They didn’t steal the weapons, didn’t use them. They didn’t need them. Their victory was an easy one and they knew it. They were enjoying it. Houellebecq could see it in their faces. Even the zombies who were shot went down sneering, and Houellebecq had the distinct impression they were far from dead.
An unfair fight, in every sense… and all over in less than five minutes.
When it was done, Houellebecq stood. He surveyed the carnage for a moment – the many scattered limbs, the great pools of blood spreading across the concrete. Then he turned and exited the hanger.
He found his way to another shed with military vehicles. He selected a pickup truck, got in and searched for keys. He found them eventually under the driver’s seat. He fired up the engine and rolled out of the garage, feeling numb. He pointed the vehicle in the direction of the main facility, the ARC. There was no road, nothing to guide him except for a tiny glinting off in the distance, but it was enough. He would drive across the sand. He would drive to Missy.
He motored quietly through roaming packs of zombies. Then, clearing them at last, he accelerated as much as was possible in the desert sand.
He was still numb, still in shock. He knew he was. But it wasn’t the shock of surviving. It was the shock of seeing the future, a post-human earth.
His father’s words came back to him again.
As it should be, as it should be.
Chapter 28
Somewhere in the Gobi
Missy stared at the vault in disbelief. Who would build such a thing?
The young, shy tech had led her down here, through winding, deserted corridors Missy would never have been able to navigate on her own. Missy was beginning to trust the woman. She needed an ally right now, and this woman was all that was on offer. She seemed shy and vulnerable, but most of all scared.
Missy was scared too.
‘Who could design this, build this?’ she asked the young tech. ‘Knowing you need to put a living human being inside like this…?’
Missy refocused on Kilgariff at the center of the vault. The poor woman was strapped to a gurney, her wrists and legs buckled in place with thick metal cuffs.
The vault was no less cruel. It was a giant metal and glass tube.
Missy counted: the tube had five enormous curved glass panels, all held together by steel. The glass looked as though it was at least a few feet deep.
Taken together, these five glass panels and five steel joiners created a tall cylinder.
On the glass panel in front of Missy, there was a doorway. It was similar to the sort of doorway found on bank safes: round, apparently driven by hydraulics. At its center sat the computer equipment required to open it. Missy stepped forward. She studied the sensors for the fingerprint and retina. Then, opening her free hand, she looked down at the finger and soggy eyeball she had carried down here. She was aware, looking at these two items lying on her palm, of hypocrisy. She was disgusted at whoever had tied Kilgariff to a gurney in a vault, yet was holding another human being’s finger, another human being’s eye.
She wondered momentarily what do with the pistol in her other hand, then handed the finger and eye to the tech. She pointed the gun at her. ‘You do it.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because I have the gun.’
Following the text instructions, the tech scanned Tang’s pass card, then used his finger to meet the requirements for the fingerprint scan. She rolled the small clump of flesh left and right across the sensor, clearly disgusted by it.
Missy hoped the blood wouldn’t contaminate anything.
The sensor flashed green.
‘Now the eye,’ said Missy, still pointing the gun at the tech’s head.
The eyeball was harder to do. The tech received two error messages before managing to inflate the eye enough to get an okay from the computer.
Missy only relaxed when this sensor also flashed green.
The complex hydraulics governing the door hissed into action, and the door swung open with surprising speed. ‘You’re in,’ said the tech. ‘Can I go now?’
‘No. Wait here. You try to leave or do anything suspicious, I’ll shoot you.’
It was a bit of an empty threat, but Missy didn’t feel the tech was capable of deceit. She was too shy, too meek and timid. Too scared.
Missy cautiously entered the narrow vault. Being a glass and steel cylinder, there wasn’t much floor space. Just enough for the gurney. But it rose at least ten feet above her.
Kilgariff’s head rolled towards her, her eyes tracking her as she approached. There was no sign of urine or feces, suggesting staff had been coming in and out, removing and replacing bags.
Kilgariff was wearing nothing beyond a medical gown, presumably provided for modesty alone.
‘I’ve come to get you out,’ Missy said, before glancing back at the tech. She trusted this woman but didn’t want to trust her too much. Missy had already taken her pass card, but the tech knew her way around.
The tech hadn’t moved. She still looked terrified.
Missy looked back to Kilgariff. There was the faintest curl of a smile at the edges of her lips. She shook her head faintly.
‘No?’ Missy asked.
‘No.’
Missy figured Kilgariff had misunderstood. She put down the pistol and started unscrewing the metal cuffs, working to free her from the gurney. ‘It’s okay. I’m here to free you.’
‘No.’ Kilgariff said, this time with more force. Her eyes were still moving, but they weren’t tracking Missy. It was disconcerting. Missy looked behind her.
No one.
The only other person down here was the young tech, and she was standing out beyond the open vault door – Kilgariff couldn’t even see her.
What was Kilgariff looking at? Missy scanned the vault again, but finding nothing she returned her attention to Kilgariff’s cuffs. Working on them, she simultaneously examined the IV which was providing Protein Z. The thin, transparent tube came from a panel in the ceiling, snaking its way down to the inside of Kilgariff’s elbow.
‘Kilgariff, can you hear me? Do you know who I am?’
Missy momentarily entertained the idea that Kilgariff had been drugged. This wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, after all. Tang had wanted her docile, compliant. What better way to achieve that than with sedatives of some kind?
Kilgariff’s lips moved again, and Missy was sure now. There was definitely some kind of a smile there, perhaps even a smirk.
‘Kill me,’ Kilgariff said.
‘What? What did you just say?’
‘I said, kill me.’ Kilgariff sounded out the words carefully, deliberately.
Missy had still been unbuckling. She paused, trying to understand. She had come to collect Kilgariff, to fr
ee her. Kilgariff was infected, yes, but she had received Protein Z. Missy knew how that felt. She had been guzzling Proteins Z on her way here – from a drink bottle. She was fine. Kilgariff was going to be fine. Of course, Kilgariff would need to be gassed to deal with the –
Kilgariff’s eyes were roaming again. Suddenly Missy understood why. Kilgariff was tracking something around the edges of the vault. She was hallucinating.
‘Tell me what you see, Kilgariff.’
Kilgariff was infected, but she had never been treated with carbon monoxide. She had triggered a dome, and she seemingly had an unlimited supply of Protein Z, but nothing had been done about the hallucinations.
Missy resolved to hold off on freeing Kilgariff until she understood more. She took a few steps back, trying to make sense of things, and that was when she heard the hydraulics. Instinctively, she turned and started walking towards the vault door. She was half expecting soldiers, firearms. But there wasn’t anyone. Just the same young, shy tech.
Missy realized the tech had activated some kind of unseen emergency lock. She also realized she wasn’t going to make it to the door in time to get out. There wasn’t even time to go for the pistol.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the tech. ‘I didn’t do it, I swear. It’s someone else.’
‘You’re lying.’ But the vault door had already sealed itself, cutting off all sound.
Something was moving overhead. Looking up, Missy saw huge steel panels sliding down the outside of the vault’s glass segments. The door to the vault wound tight as the tech went on staring at Missy, tears in her eyes now.
Then the enormous steel shutters fell between them.
They boomed as they finally hit the ground, blocking out all light.
Missy was lost in perfect darkness.
There was a hissing, a crackling sound. It was faint at first, then louder. Missy saw an intense red glow appear at the bottom of each steel shutter. She remembered what the tech had said. The vault was capable of welding itself shut, permanently sealing itself.
Missy heard a large air-conditioner come to life above, then the tink tink-tink of fluorescent lighting.
‘Careful,’ said Kilgariff, ‘he’s right behind you.’
Chapter 29
Somewhere in the Gobi
Houellebecq didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. Missy had to have seen him coming back across the desert. He had even tried the radio in the truck before abandoning it at the beginning of the defenses.
But it didn’t seem like anyone in the ARC was listening. Not even Tang’s soldiers. He could see emergency lights swirling throughout the complex.
What was going on?
Was this just the facility gearing up for the first waves, or something more sinister?
It had been a difficult, sliding drive back across the desert sands, a tiring drive after everything he had witnessed. It was hard not to give into despair. His arms and legs were cut and bleeding from fighting his way through the barbed wire, through the trenches, past the machine guns that would – if all went according to plan – soon be manned by mutants.
But at least now he was nearing the entrance to the northern hanger.
He checked behind him, back across the trenches, back towards the air base. He could see the horde coming. They were kicking up sand the way weather did, causing a dust storm of sorts.
‘Come on Missy,’ he said under his breath. ‘Open up.’
For a long time, nothing happened. Then the enormous hangar door started rumbling.
The northern hangar was opening! His spirits soared. He could hear enormous chains, like those used on cargo ships for anchoring. The door started rolling steadily upward. It was easily the size of a football field and he whooped his appreciation. An engineering marvel, defying gravity!
Then his euphoria disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. He reminded himself it was likely just the facility running on autopilot. It had been built to do this, and now it was readying itself for the first wave, the intake it would gas. He wasn’t going to get crushed against the hangar door, but that didn’t mean he was safe.
He stared at the distant rear wall.
No ladder.
And even if he could get the ladder to deploy, he didn’t have authentication for the elevator. West had that. The card was lying on a corpse back at the air base.
He cursed his stupidity.
He was just going to have to hope it was Missy up there looking out for him, that she would have his back when the time came.
He walked into the enormous hangar, past beds and kitchenettes and more beds and kitchenettes. He looked up at the roof, at the pipes and showerheads which would disperse the gas. He thought of 1994, of his father’s soothing words as he urged them to get into the car.
Of his mother, his sister.
Would he ever see his sister again? Or was he going to die in here, mauled or crushed or trampled? He wasn’t a target, but conflict was coming, and his chances of surviving it in here were negligible.
For some reason though, he pressed on. He needed to get to the back of the hangar as soon as possible, even if he wasn’t sure why.
His feet echoed in the cavernous space, his coughing swallowed up by it. He scanned it as he walked, taking in the swirling red lights. It occurred to him that he had devoted his life to this moment. Would it even work without Tang? He thought of Agent Cisneros, his old boss. Had she received his message, typed while on the train? Would she know how to interpret the simple coordinates his phone had hopefully sent from the wifi at the air base? If not, and if this northern intake failed, it could be years before anyone discovered this place.
Or maybe never.
Maybe Cisneros was dead, lost to a zombie horde in Washington, or to a nuclear apocalypse he didn’t even know had happened. The internet had shrunk the world, but without it, distance was stretching out once again…
It took him close on half an hour to walk from the hangar door to its backmost wall. He tried the elevator, providing a fingerprint and retina scan, but it informed him his clearances had all been revoked.
Something had gone wrong. It seemed likely Missy had been found in the control room, along with Tang’s corpse. That would explain the flashing red lights throughout the ARC. He didn’t remember them being part of the protocol.
He sat down on one of the military beds. He took out his father’s journal, which had been carrying for a long time now – ever since Tang returned it to him. Inside was the hair from the child at Mrs. Liu’s house. He ran it between thumb and forefinger. Soft, innocent, and yet he would never forget those eyes. He thought of Ken Onoda, of the Weifang plague. Not simply the first one in the 1930s, but the second one, too, during The Great Leap. It had all been there, the answers they needed, the warning of what was to come… He thought of the Carrick, of its crew. How had their eyes looked, as they savaged one another sixty-something meters under the sea?
He thought of his father. Already, he missed his father.
As it should be, as it should be…
His father had planned even this.
He put the journal down on the pillow at the top of the bed, then stood. He turned and stared out into the desert beyond the hanger. From this far in, it was just a small square of yellow sand and dusty sky. The ground was trembling slightly now. It was coming. It wouldn’t be long.
His mind drifted to Kilgariff in the vault. He had been in the vault once, shown it by his father. He knew how claustrophobic it could be in there. He knew that it could weld itself shut. In fact, that would be happening right about now. Or maybe it had happened already.
Protocol.
The ARC was ready. Nothing would get to Kilgariff, a thought which was both comforting and horrifying. She would die, but die slowly. Her IV provided her not simply with Protein Z, but with calories and fluids, too. She would soon be the last mutant on earth, protected by a fortress of his father’s imagining and design. She would die, but she would save humankind.
Perhaps it was a good thing, West preventing him from going to her. He had known that it was the wrong thing to do, that he was letting emotion cloud his judgment.
Perhaps that was why he had forced himself to walk in here.
He looked to towards the desert again. The rumbling was stronger now, the divide between desert and dust even less clear. It had all been put in motion, ready or not, and eventually every mutant on the planet would feel an urge to gravitate this way, to eradicate the dome which threatened everything…
Kilgariff would be a hero. His sister, too. But how would he be remembered? He didn’t want to think about it. He was a traitor, or at least, that’s what the record would show. And maybe that was fair.
Maybe not.
He stood and tried the elevator again, but without any real hope. There never had been any plan for him to survive. Nor, truthfully, for his father or sister to survive. The ARC was built to reset everything, to eradicate any and all genetic alterations made by the substance. That was as it needed to be.
Anything less would be defeat.
He looked out into the unforgiving desert one last time. It didn’t feel like it, but he reminded himself that it was the zombies who were running scared now. And, like it or not, he was with them. Altered, mutated, doomed.
All was as it needed to be.
Chapter 30
Somewhere in the Gobi
Missy spun again, but there was still no one there. ‘You can’t see him?’ Kilgariff asked, openly smiling now. She tested her restraints, and seemed disappointed to find that both her legs and arms were still fastened to the gurney.
Missy searched the vault again, but there was definitely no one else in it with them. ‘I can’t see him,’ she said, ‘but I get the feeling he can see me?’
‘Yes. He’s been watching you for a long time. You impress him.’
‘I impress him?’ Missy thought of asking what the man in the vault with them looked like, but she realized this was pointless. The man would look like, well… whatever sort of man looked good to Kilgariff. Missy suspected the hallucinations were deeply personal, tailored to appeal. So she decided instead to focus on the words.
