Z. Apocalypse

by Steve Cole

  ‘Get us out of here, Zed!’ Adam shouted. ‘Those things spit acid! If you get too close—’

  Too late. The Brutes were already spraying thick jets of liquid. Adam threw himself at Zoe, knocking her into the snow as the rain of acid fell around them.

  Zed’s face was the target. The towering dinosaur bellowed with pain and staggered back – almost crushing Adam as he did so – clawing at his eyes, swinging his head all about in a gruesome, agonized dance.

  ‘No!’ Adam yelled helplessly.

  ‘We’ve got to hide,’ sobbed Zoe, clawing at the snow, trying to bury herself. ‘Help me!’

  But Adam couldn’t move, transfixed by the animal violence. Fearless, the first two Brutes had hurled themselves at Zed, biting and clawing. Zed had quickly batted them away, but they simply attacked again – and, blinded by the acid attack, he couldn’t see that they were driving him dangerously close to the precipice.

  Zed pushed out his wings ready to fly to safety, but now the other Brutes were attacking in force, a writhing mass of teeth, claws and muscle. Four pounced onto his back, biting and gouging at the gristly sails, gripping him around the neck so he couldn’t beat his wings. Others clawed at his legs and belly, circling and snapping, relentless, forcing him backwards.

  The struggle was over in seconds. Roaring impotently, Zed floundered over the edge of the chasm, the Brutes clinging to his struggling form even as they went to their deaths.

  ‘No!’ Adam screamed.

  Zoe twisted hard on his arm. ‘Shhh!’

  But, alerted by Adam’s cry, one of the six remaining Brutes whirled round. Its eyes narrowed at the sight of easy prey. The rest of the pack turned as one and began to advance – gibbering, hissing, and hungry for the kill.

  Then a piercing screech rose above the Brutes’ roars. Adam’s eyes snapped back towards the cave to see Keera attacking the Brutes from behind. Her wings were raked with cuts and steaming with acid burns, but like some hideous angel of death she had risen again – to deal a brutal retribution.

  The claws of one foot hooked down into a Brute’s eyes and yanked its head back so far its neck snapped in a moment. Another Brute howled as her jaws crunched down on its arm, ripping the limb away at the shoulder. It flailed about in gory panic, smashing its pack-brothers aside while Keera flapped out of reach of the acid sprays fired in retaliation. Moments later she dived back down behind her attackers and opened their backs with her talons. As they shrieked with pain and anger Keera stretched her wings as wide as she could and swept the wounded animals clear over the precipice. Their terrified shrieks lingered in the air, but the Brutes themselves were already lost in the white soup of snow and fog.

  Keera circled over the chasm like a giant bird of prey, blood streaming from her wounds, her body mottled black with bruises. She shrieked her defiance into the void before landing with a stumble back on the snowy ledge. The battle and the bloodshed had ended with the same swift ferocity as it had begun.

  Still stunned, Adam stumbled over to Keera. ‘Are you OK? My god, Keera, that was the bravest thing I ever . . . I mean, you were . . .’ The words trailed off as he looked past her to the precipice. Surely, any moment now, Zed would come soaring up to join them, recovered.

  ‘Zed!’ he called, trudging over to the ledge, where he fell to his knees. He waited, and waited, the bitter wind bringing tears to his eyes. There was nothing to see.

  A hand came down on his shoulder. He turned to see Zoe had dragged herself through the snow to join him. Shaking clods of icy white from her hair and shoulders, she put her arms around Adam and began to sob.

  Then both were thrown aside as the air exploded into fierce blue sparks around Keera. The pterosaur’s scream sounded almost human as she shook in a haze of indigo.

  Electroshock weapons, Adam realized numbly. Gene-flow’s found us. He tried to see Keera’s attackers, but the glare was too great. ‘Zoe, we’ve got to run,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll carry you, come on.’

  But Zoe didn’t seem to hear, clutching her head as if feeling the pain herself. ‘Leave her alone! You’re killing her.’

  Finally the electric onslaught cut out and Keera crumpled, lifeless, to the ground, so battered and beaten Adam couldn’t look at her. Zoe was still clutching her head, moaning gently. Adam held up his hands in surrender as four people closed in, their faces masked by hoods, scarves and snow-goggles, each carrying a large, tubular weapon.

  Fear gave Adam courage, and he lunged for the nearest gun, hoping to wrestle it free. But he slipped in the snow and fell beside Zoe. A boot smacked into his ribs and he gasped. The figures loomed over him, shock weapons pointed at his head.

  ‘No. Don’t harm him.’ It was a woman’s voice.

  The circle of guards parted to reveal a figure dressed in a padded, fur-trimmed parka, hat and goggles. ‘Hello, Adam. Hello, Zoe. Thank you for coming.’

  Her? Adam recognized the voice, but didn’t want to. It’s impossible. She’s dead.

  ‘All our raptor sentries – destroyed? The death of this rogue pterosaur really is long overdue.’ The woman pulled off her goggles and fur-lined hat to reveal dark, striking and all-too-familiar features.

  ‘Samantha Josephs . . .’ Adam felt winded. She looked just the same as when he’d first met her – and yet, he’d seen her mauled to death by one of her own creations. ‘How? I saw you die on Raptor Island.’

  ‘Try to use your intelligence.’ Josephs’ tone was a good match for the freezing arctic air. ‘I have never been to Raptor Island.’

  Adam was reeling with shock. ‘But then how—?’

  ‘I was cloned from Samantha Josephs almost a year ago. One of us may be dead . . . but the other goes on.’ The woman took a menacing step closer. ‘Blind luck has allowed your survival when the odds would seem against it, but science has made me immortal. And science will beat chance every time.’ She looked at him almost pityingly. ‘I will never die, Adam . . . but very soon now, your world will perish.’

  Chapter 15: Taking a Life

  FINALLY ADAM UNDERSTOOD Josephs’ last words to him on Raptor Island, spat through bleeding lips: It’s all right. I’m still alive . . . you haven’t even won yourself breathing space.

  ‘There’s really no call for such a dumbstruck expression.’ Josephs’ English accent lent a glass-sharp edge to her words. ‘You’re an intelligent child. You know we have cloned many animals, you have seen how we can download human minds into computers and upload them into new bodies . . .’

  ‘But, you’re exactly the same.’ Adam’s voice was hoarse. ‘I thought a clone of a person would have to grow from, like, a baby.’

  ‘The cells of the clone are force-evolved, expertly matured until they match the original. Then we transfer all memories, experience and personality to create a perfect duplicate.’ Josephs shrugged as if this were picture-book simple. ‘When Jeffrey Hayden was killed by your “pet” Z. rex, Geneflow lost its Director of Operations needlessly. So, when I took over his position, my first act was to step up our research into human replication.’

  Unwilling to accept what Josephs was telling him, Adam broke in, ‘Where’s my dad . . . and Zoe’s mum?’

  ‘All in good time.’ Josephs looked at Zoe, who was still rocking on her haunches, sobbing quietly. ‘I suggest you both come inside before you die of exposure.’ She turned to two of the guards. ‘Take them to the Neural Suite.’

  One of the guards hauled Adam to his feet by the scruff of his neck.

  Zoe struggled as another picked her up from the ground. ‘What are you going to do with Keera?’

  ‘The beast will be recycled,’ said Josephs simply, turning to the other two guards. ‘See to it – then get over to the airstrip, ready to greet the new arrivals. There are two more planes due to land today . . .’

  ‘Keera!’ As the guard trudged away towards the Brutes’ cave, Zoe twisted round in his arms, staring helplessly after the broken body of the pterosaur, lying abandoned in the crimson snow.

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nbsp; Gloved fingers dug into Adam’s neck, and marched him forwards after her.

  Josephs didn’t mention Zed, Adam realized. If he’s still alive in the canyon there – and he’s got to be – he’ll come after us. He’ll save us. He’ll . . . But as he passed Keera, all bloodied and burned, hope began to fade. In the hillside opening he saw three snowmobiles were waiting. It’s not a cave at all – it’s the mouth of a tunnel.

  The two guards loaded Zoe and Adam on board the nearest skidoo. Josephs climbed into the one behind, while the other two guards remained with Keera. Then, with a throaty roar, the powerful sleds started off down the icy passageway.

  Dim lights shone overhead as they passed huge nests made from trampled rubbish, piles of bones, stinking dungheaps. Other tunnels fed into the passage on both sides. ‘It’s like an underground burrow,’ Adam whispered to Zoe, realization dawning. ‘The raptors live out here on guard. There must be exits all around the city so they can come out and kill unwelcome visitors.’

  ‘We never stood a chance,’ was Zoe’s only response.

  Adam tried to remember the twists and turns they took through the wide tunnels, dismayed by just how deep and far they seemed to be going.

  Finally, the vehicles slowed down as they reached a large underground parking area. A huge, rusty metal goods lift was built into the rocky wall, shielded by two sets of sliding doors. Josephs got out of her skidoo and crossed to the lift.

  Adam’s captor forced him out of the snowmobile and marched him across to join her. ‘Are we under the city?’ Adam asked.

  ‘That’s right.’ Josephs punched a complicated series of numbers into a keypad beside the doors and they cranked slowly open.

  ‘Did Colonel Oldman and Dr Marrs tell you we’d be coming?’ Adam was pushed into the scuffed steel space inside. ‘We know they’re working for Geneflow.’

  ‘Actually, they’re not,’ said Josephs casually, following him in. ‘And Zoe’s mother isn’t here either, I’m afraid.’

  Adam swapped frowns with Zoe. ‘What?’

  ‘We asked Bill Adlar to say all that, so you wouldn’t look to Fort Meade for help.’ She smiled at Adam. ‘You’d come to us instead. Of course, that meant hacking into your phone and blocking all calls apart from ours—’

  ‘Then, the colonel and Dr Marrs are on our side . . .?’ Adam felt as if the mental bolts that held him together were coming undone. He bowed his head. ‘Dad lied. You made him lie. What did you do to him—?’

  ‘Let me go!’ Suddenly Zoe bucked and twisted in the arms of her guard as he tried to force her into the lift. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you!’

  ‘Use some logic, Zoe,’ said Josephs. ‘If you were released, without support or a wheelchair, how could you hope to get away in any case?’

  Zoe stopped struggling and glared at Josephs, close to tears. ‘All we’ve been through. All the pain. I thought . . . at least at the end of it, I’d see Mum . . .’

  Josephs said nothing, but once Zoe’s guard had carried her in and closed the doors, she pressed a red button. The lift started downwards, rumbling and rattling. Deeper and deeper underground they went. Adam saw Zoe’s eyes glinting with tears. If he hadn’t felt so absolutely numb he might’ve joined in.

  ‘I want to see my dad,’ he muttered.

  ‘You will, in due course,’ said Josephs briskly.

  ‘Where is this place, anyway?’

  ‘In the early 1980s, when the Cold War between East and West was coldest, the former Soviet Union built dozens of underground cities. Elaborate shelters in which the privileged few could survive a nuclear war.’ Josephs unzipped her heavy coat as the lift continued its plunge into the earth. ‘Towns like the one above, closed to the public, housed the construction workers as they toiled below, and made a good cover for what they were doing here. When the global situation improved for a time, the cities were abandoned. Now we have acquired them.’

  ‘So the military’s right,’ Adam breathed, ‘Russia has taken control of Geneflow.’

  Josephs smiled as if at some secret joke. ‘It would seem so. Wouldn’t it?’

  Finally the lift lurched to a stop and the doors clanked open onto dim lights and breezeblocks. Adam and Zoe were hauled after Josephs as she walked smartly into a nondescript corridor. A balding man with a wispy beard came into sight at the end of it. ‘I’ve checked the raptors’ life signs,’ he called, in an accent that sounded French, not Russian. ‘They’re dead. All our sentries, dead!’

  Josephs nodded as she closed the distance between them. ‘The beast responsible is being recycled.’

  Beast, singular, thought Adam, as the guards stopped their herding, waiting for their mistress to move on. She can’t have seen Zed then, before he . . .

  ‘Don’t kill Keera,’ Zoe said quietly. ‘Please.’

  Josephs spared her the briefest of glances. ‘Have the labs grow new sentries, Mr Thierry.’

  Thierry looked doubtful. ‘There’ll be a delay. We’re at full capacity rearing Z. rexes for the attack on Mongolia.’

  ‘That takes precedence,’ Josephs agreed.

  ‘With Russia to their north and China to their south, they’ll join the West in blaming one of them—’

  ‘Yes. Tensions must continue to rise. Carry on, Mr Thierry.’ Josephs turned from him and resumed her brisk walk. Thierry spared a brief, puzzled glance at Adam, Zoe and their captors as they pushed past, but said nothing more.

  The breezeblock corridors seemed to stretch on for miles, but Josephs finally stopped beside a set of double doors and swiped a pass card through an electronic reader on the wall. The doors opened stiffly onto a large, shadowy room. As the guards pushed Adam and Zoe inside, a series of strip lights on the ceiling flickered into life with dazzling brightness.

  Adam blinked away his blindness, and with a sick feeling of dread realized the room was some kind of operating theatre. A cushioned table in the centre of the room dangled restraint straps. A huge, rectangular slab of glass and metal hung down from the ceiling above it, like a giant flatbed scanner turned upside down.

  And beside the table, Adam saw a stainless steel trolley with a collection of scalpels and scary-looking instruments. Panicking, he kicked and struggled for release with manic determination. But the men held him fast.

  ‘Don’t distress yourself, Adam.’ Josephs removed her coat and placed it on a chair. ‘Zoe will be first.’

  ‘No!’ Zoe shrieked as the guards manhandled her onto the cushioned table and held her down while Josephs secured the heavy straps over her arms and chest, her thigh and her forehead. ‘Please, don’t!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Adam demanded, struggling against the iron grip of his captors.

  Josephs ignored him. ‘I’m trying to help you,’ she said to Zoe. ‘This process offers you a chance to live on, free from the prison of your . . . unfortunate body.’

  ‘It’s not a prison.’ Zoe stared up at her, hatefully. ‘It’s who I am.’

  ‘“Who you are” is a stew of chemicals and blind chance,’ Josephs retorted. ‘Your life’s been so limited by your physical condition, hasn’t it? But then, we’re all of us trapped in these inefficient bodies, doomed from birth to grow old and decay.’ She crossed to a computer in the corner of the lab and started it up. ‘Or rather, we were.’

  Adam swallowed hard, staring helplessly at Zoe. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Einstein once said, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move towards higher levels.” How right he was.’ Josephs turned to face him. ‘Imagine what Einstein could have gone on to achieve if he had never died . . . or if Wagner was still composing today, or Michelangelo still painting.’ She smiled. ‘Now we have perfected human cloning and mind transference, when an old body wears out it can be replaced with a new one.’

  ‘So . . . if you’d had my mum’s mind in your computer and her DNA on file . . .’ He stared at Josephs. ‘You could have made a new one after she died?’
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br />   She nodded. ‘We could. But only minds worthy of preserving will go on. Great thinkers, fertile intellects . . . When they have so much left to give, to let them perish would be a foolish waste.’

  ‘And I suppose you get to choose who they are . . .’ A sudden realization kicked in Adam’s head. ‘These experts and scientists you’ve kidnapped . . . you’re cloning them too?’

  ‘Of course.’ Josephs turned back to her computer, and started up some software. The glass slab hanging over Zoe glowed and hummed. Machine parts inside it swept slowly from one end to the other.

  ‘What is that thing?’ Zoe said, her voice shaking. ‘What’s it doing?’

  ‘It’s mapping your entire body – every cell, inside and out.’ Josephs glanced over from the computer. ‘You know, you’re an interesting case, Zoe. It’s possible that your disability has enhanced your empathy with animals; in your heart of hearts, you see yourself like them, less than human.’

  ‘Shut up!’ snapped Zoe.

  ‘It would be easy to cure your Proteus syndrome, but were we to place your mind in another body, would that empathy still flourish?’

  ‘I said, shut up! Who cares!’

  ‘Geneflow cares.’ Josephs studied Zoe thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure Adam’s told you how we placed human minds into raptor bodies.’

  ‘Sick,’ Adam muttered.

  ‘Essential,’ Josephs countered. ‘Those experiments were simply a first step. Our final aim has always been to create a new kind of human-reptile hybrid.’ She held up a hand to silence his inevitable protest. ‘Of course, you reject the idea outright. You are a child; you have no concept of how important this research will prove. But the fact is, our hybrids often experience personality changes, unable to accept their new bodies even after . . . “persuasion”.’

  ‘You mean, you can’t do their thinking for them?’ Adam sneered.

  Josephs took the dig seriously. ‘Well, we can train them using Think-Send, but . . . still the problems remain.’ She looked at Zoe. ‘I wonder how you would adapt. On the one hand you would be able-bodied, but on the other—’