Z. Apocalypse

by Steve Cole

  Even as Adam thought about this, he triggered a vivid image of Russian soldiers in green uniform, crowding around a Z. rex. A memory of something I’ve never even seen.

  ‘You’ll need this information to play along, ’cause Josephs will want to be sure her “escaped prisoners” tell the right story to their national embassies.’ Mr Adlar’s voice paused. ‘If she guesses that you’re faking it, she’ll kill us both. But if you can fool her, if you can play her game and win, you’ll be flown to the nearest city, St Petersburg, and released. It’s your ticket out of this whole mess. Then you can do what they want you to – go to the authorities, tell your story. But of course, what they won’t know is, you’ll be telling the actual truth about everything. As for what happens then . . .’ His father’s distorted face was fading now. ‘I don’t know. Either the good guys will win, or the bad guys will. But whichever side makes it . . . at least there’ll be a you and a me. Somewhere.’

  The message ended and the image disappeared.

  ‘Oh, Dad . . .’ Adam breathed. Have you saved me – or is Josephs going to kill me right here? Then he thought of Zoe lying crumpled on Keera’s body, sleeping soundly while hungry creatures gathered around her. I hope you didn’t wake up. I hope you . . .

  Now the tears began to come. But with them came a pressure. Adam shook his head; a burning pain was building in his temples. Some side effect of tampering with the brainwash technique?

  Wiping his nose, breathing deeply, Adam pressed his forehead against a panel of cold safety-glass in the door. You can do this. You’ll be released, get back to Dad for real, warn everyone . . .

  Then he realized he could see an eerie green glow through the glass. There were four large glass tanks lined up like coffins in the middle of the next room. What the . . .?

  He saw long red hair inside the nearest tank. It floated like some exotic seaweed, hiding whatever else was inside from view. Zoe?

  Adam tried the door handle. Zoe could still be alive. Maybe Josephs needed her for some other experiment . . . The door opened easily and gave on to a futuristic hospital room suffused with that soft, undersea shine. A huge silver vat loomed beside him and he recognized it in a moment; a bio-regenerator – Geneflow’s machine for regenerating cells, that helped create Zed at the start of all this. Cables stretched from the vat to the tanks, feeding them with power and nutrients.

  With a dull chill, Adam looked at girl inside the glass, shrouded in white plastic and floating in the green-lit liquid. The hair was the same but it wasn’t Zoe – at least, not the way Adam had known her. She had two legs. Her neck was straight, her fingers even and regular. This Zoe had been cured, her disability discarded, her old body recycled like so much cheap packaging.

  The clone was covered in scales, a glistening hybrid creature. The ridges and cracks in her reptilian skin made it hard to judge age, but Adam reckoned this Zoe was only nine or ten. Her form was still evolving to its new design.

  At least she’s not dead, Adam told himself. She’ll live on in a way. But . . . how can this ever be the Zoe I knew . . .?

  Adam looked away, confused and upset. As he did so, he saw that the tank beside Zoe’s held another reptile hybrid.

  The world seemed to tilt sideways.

  He was looking at himself bobbing in the flood of nutrients – himself as a young child. Adam crouched closer to see, his own reflected face superimposed over the clone’s.

  What have they done? He felt angry, violated, help-less as he pressed a hand against the tank. No person should have the power to do this, he thought. No one should be able to choose how someone will look, or act, or be.

  The hybrid looked so peaceful lying in the tank. Adam supposed they would train this new him, repress his memories, start him over as a loyal and happy Geneflow follower. ‘But you’re not one of them,’ Adam hissed. ‘You’re still me. Whatever body they build for you, you’re me, and don’t you ever, ever forget that—’

  The words dried on his tongue as the hybrid’s eyes snapped open. They seemed to gaze at him through the chemical slime. Adam stared back into his own eyes. Was there any intelligence inside this growing shell, or was all that to be added? It was hard to recognize what reactions, if any, played on the reptilian features.

  Adam leaned forward, close to the glass. ‘Never forget,’ he whispered.

  Then the pain in his head came back, hot and sharp, driving him to stand. Adam turned his back on the nightmarish experiments in the lab and almost ran back to the tiny room he’d come from.

  He wasn’t a second too soon. Footsteps outside signalled someone was coming.

  Oh my God, oh my God . . .

  Flustered, Adam lay back on the couch, tried to stop his eyelids from twitching, tried to clear his head. The fake memories actually helped in that regard – they stood out in his mind like patches of fresh paint on an old wall.

  He heard the door open sharply, couldn’t help but flinch at the sound. He acted groggy, like he was just coming round from a long sleep.

  There was Josephs, a shock-gun in one hand, a beaker of water in the other. ‘Hello, Adam.’ She handed him the drink. ‘Here. You’ve been unconscious for some time. The cloning process does leave the donors a little disorientated, as well as thirsty.’ Her dark eyes scrutinized him as a butcher would inspect meat. ‘I imagine your memories of your time here are a little . . . hazy?’

  Adam eyed her gun and gulped at the water. Here goes. ‘I remember you introducing me to your Russian Army friends,’ he sneered. ‘Remember how they bragged about the White House attack . . .’ It was like his brain was running cut scenes in a videogame, the parts that broke up the game play – you had no control over them, you could only watch.

  We both know none of it’s real, he thought. But everything depends on her believing that I believe.

  ‘Well, well.’ Josephs watched him, poker-faced, as he finished outlining the sham events. ‘I’d say your memory seems just fine.’

  Does she know? Adam pushed on with the bluff. ‘What I don’t remember is anyone telling me why you’ve bred Z. dactyls as well as the raptors and rexes. Why bother? How come you’ve made them able to swim as well as fly?’

  ‘I suppose you find that unnatural, and therefore “wrong” in some way.’ Josephs shook her head. ‘It is efficient. Our pterosaurs’ prime directive requires swiftness in the air and at sea – so we have given them both.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . . Good for you.’ Adam felt suddenly dizzy. ‘What’s a . . . prime directive?’

  ‘A core instruction, more important than anything.’ Josephs tutted. ‘You know, Adam, I’m a little disappointed in you. You haven’t even asked about poor Zoe.’

  Adam froze. Of course, Dad wasn’t meant to wake me; I shouldn’t know what’s happened to her. ‘Where is she?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Sorry. You’ve missed your chance now.’ Josephs glanced between Adam and the inner door that led to the tanks; was it amusement in her look, or something harder? His sight was blurring, he couldn’t keep focus. ‘You look tired again, Adam. I do believe you’re going back to sleep.’

  ‘No . . .’ Adam let the beaker slip from his hand. ‘The water. You . . . drugged me?’

  ‘Yet again.’ Josephs nodded. ‘But you won’t be able to hold it against me.’ Her voice began to distort as the drug brought in darkness. ‘You’re going a long way from here, Adam . . . and a good deal closer to the end of the world.’

  Adam’s senses kicked in fitfully on his way out from the base. He smelled the sweat of the men holding him by his arms, felt the wintry blast of the Arctic on his face. Coloured lights blurred around the airstrip, a dark stripe in the snow. But are they taking me away to freedom, he thought feebly, or to the vault for recycling?

  ‘Soon be over,’ a voice echoed in his ear.

  And suddenly his face hit concrete with a wet smack. Adam tasted blood in his mouth, heard a terrifying roar overhead. ‘No,’ he moaned, turning onto his back, trying to open his eyes. In a blu
r of light he saw teeth like huge ivory blades swinging down towards him, felt heavy footfalls jar around him. Something dragged across Adam’s chest, rolled him over. There was blood all over him, but he felt no pain. The roar came again, triumphant, exultant.

  Then there was just silence.

  Adam turned over again to find fat white flakes of snow spilling lazily from a charcoal sky. I’m still outside. A floodlight was shining. It was too quiet. Dread prickled at his spine. What happened to . . .?

  A giant dinosaur loomed over him, bloody drool stringing from its jaws. Corded muscles twitched and flexed all over its dark, scarred bulk.

  ‘Ad . . . am,’ breathed the creature.

  ‘Zed . . .?’ He shook his head dizzily and saw the remains of a mangled guard on the asphalt beside a small passenger plane. I never left the airstrip. The guards must’ve dropped me when . . . ‘Oh, Zed!’ Relief crashed through him as huge scaly hands scooped him up. ‘I thought you were dead . . .’

  ‘Fell far,’ Zed grunted. ‘Broke bones.’

  ‘Are you all right now?’ Adam felt the drug in his bloodstream hauling him back to blackness, and willed his eyes to stay open. ‘Zed, Josephs is in there . . . she’s killed Zoe . . . and Keera. They’ve . . . We’ve got to . . .’

  Zed said nothing, but tightened his hold on Adam just a little. The snow went on falling as Adam gave in to sleep at last.

  Chapter 18: In the Forest

  ADAM WOKE AGAIN to find he was still gripped firmly in Zed’s arms. Night had swollen purple over a landscape of lakes and forests far below them. He had no idea how long Zed had been flying. He felt chilled, hungry, thirsty and exhausted.

  With nothing else to do, he brooded on all he had seen and found out in Geneflow’s base.

  Josephs kills. She creates life. She can never die. She can change someone completely – body and mind.

  She and her Z. creatures are pushing the whole world into a war to end all wars.

  And who has the world got to stick up for it?

  Me and a talking dinosaur.

  Even as the bitter thought passed through his mind, he pressed his face harder against Zed’s skin. I thought I’d lost you. At least while you’re here . . .

  Suddenly Zed’s stealth powers activated; his hide became a mirror to the wilderness beneath them and for a dreadful moment Adam thought he was going to fall. Then through the numbing gale he heard a low drone of rotors. The sleek design of a helicopter revealed itself from the wash of grey cloud ahead. Adam swore. The world was on maximum alert and Zed would be a prime target for any power . . .

  The next instant, Zed dropped into a steep dive at sickening speed into a snowbound forest. Adam cried out, clinging feebly to the dinosaur’s arms as Zed swung his bulk this way and that through the towering firs, smashing branches to matchwood, using the collisions to help him brake. Only when the terrible crashing had stopped and Zed’s massive three-toed feet were stamping through snow and undergrowth did Adam breathe again, slowly and shakily.

  ‘Where are we?’ Adam asked as Zed finally stopped and carefully put him down. Adam watched as Zed bit at the snow, slaking his thirst.

  ‘Help,’ Zed said softly. ‘She is near.’

  ‘She who?’

  ‘She . . . like me.’ Zed looked at Adam. ‘And she like you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Adam complained. He knew Zed didn’t mean to talk in riddles but . . .

  Suddenly he heard voices behind him, a language he couldn’t place. Straining to see round Zed’s bulk he felt a stab of fear as two tall figures dressed head to foot in khaki pushed through the forest brush, electro-shock weapons gripped in both hands. Both men shouted in the same unfamiliar language as they aimed their guns.

  But they were just a fraction too slow. Zed whipped out his tail and struck the tree beside them. The splintered fir struck the soldiers like a giant’s club, smashing them to the ground – and they stayed there, not moving. Shivering with cold, Adam picked his way over to them and felt gingerly for pulses in their necks. ‘They’re just knocked out,’ he breathed as he discerned a faint throb.

  ‘Had no smell,’ Zed rumbled.

  ‘They must be wearing anti-stink.’ Adam’s voice sounded strangely deadened by the gloomy pine-forest acoustics. He searched the men’s pockets, and found a chocolate bar in one of them. Greedily, he tore open the wrapper and pushed the whole thing into his mouth, swallowing it almost whole. ‘You think these soldiers are from the Russian army?’

  Zed snorted his ignorance.

  Adam picked up one of the fallen shock weapons. ‘One thing’s sure, they must be out hunting for dinosaurs.’

  The black eyes fixed on him. ‘For her.’

  ‘Her who?’ Adam sighed. ‘Zed, if you can’t smell the soldiers, we could walk straight into another attack.’

  ‘Hear them. Far off.’ Zed set off through the Christmas-scented forest.

  Stomach aching with nerves and hunger, and still holding the shock-weapon, Adam followed him. The trek seemed to go on for ever, and he found it hard to stop shivering. The drone of more ’copters wafting overhead unnerved him, adding to his fatigue.

  Finally, the forest began to thin out. Adam noted more trees fallen than were standing; some seemed to have been completely uprooted, others stood smashed and splintered at head height. It was as if a plummeting aircraft had come crashing through the firs, or . . .

  Or a pterosaur.

  Zed moved aside, turned to look at Adam with dark eyes. ‘Kee . . . ra . . .’

  How . . .? For a long while, Adam was completely lost for words. He wasn’t even sure it was really Keera; the beast was in a terrible state. Her skin was a glistening grey-white, save for three huge, festering gashes clawed into her side. One wing looked broken, rimmed with thick black crusts of blood. Her feet were mangled, half the talons wrenched away. Her blackened eyes were closed and her enormous jaws sagged open as she panted for breath.

  ‘No, she’s dead.’ Adam looked away from the pathetic, half broken animal and gripped his stolen shock-gun. ‘This must be another Z. dactyl – they’re clones, remember?’

  At the sound of his voice, the creature stirred. Her eyes opened and she tried to shift her weight, to turn towards him.

  ‘Her.’ With a hiss and a snort, Zed turned, lowered his head closer to the ground, and stomped away back into the forest.

  ‘Zed, wait!’ Adam called hoarsely. ‘Where are you . . .?’

  But the Z. rex had gone.

  ‘How can you be Keera,’ Adam whispered, a savage spite stealing into his voice. ‘Keera’s dead.’

  A low, rasping chitter came from the creature as if in mournful reply, and she opened her jaws wider.

  And Adam saw a muddy bundle stir inside. It was a girl, her face ghostly white. She smiled at him weakly, wonderingly, her matted hair as red as the bloody scratches on her cheek and neck.

  This is impossible, it can’t be her . . . it’s a ghost . . . no way . . . this is crazy—

  ‘Is this for real . . .?’ the girl whispered. ‘Adam?’

  ‘Zoe!’ Dropping the gun, Adam ran to the pterosaur’s jaws and dragged Zoe free. ‘Zoe, is it— is it really you?’ He saw the warped neck, her big fingers and could’ve kissed them. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘Of course it’s me, you dumb pom!’ She held him, but her grip was weak, and her skin and clothes were crusted with blood and dark brown mess. ‘Got any food?’ She was shivering with cold. ‘Not eaten in days.’

  He felt a sudden flare of guilt for the chocolate bar he’d just devoured. ‘I . . . no, I don’t. I’m sorry. I’ll find something.’ He laid her down, unzipped his Geneflow jacket and wrapped it around her. ‘I know it’s not a sleeping bag – but it’ll have to do.’

  Zoe took the warm coat gratefully. ‘It does.’ She licked the snow beside her, and Adam helped push some into her mouth. ‘Thank you. If this is a dream, don’t wake me. I’ve felt so alone . . .’

  ‘I saw yo
u on security cameras,’ he told her, breathing through his mouth to shut out some of the smell. ‘How’d you ever get out of that place? I thought you were going to be eaten.’

  ‘I woke up to find jaws around me. But they were Keera’s, she was trying to protect me.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I was so afraid . . . Screaming. Trapped inside that cramped little space while Z. rexes kicked her and clawed and bit her and tried to open her jaws to get to me . . .’

  Adam listened in horror; all he could think of was the scaly Zoe clone growing quietly in the tank while the real her suffered.

  ‘Keera was too weak to fly, but she broke past them and squeezed into the pipe that took away all the dinosaur crap . . .’ Zoe looked up at Adam. ‘They kept clawing at her, but she didn’t give up. She forced her way into this sewer place underneath. Dragged herself through miles of stinking darkness – or it felt like miles. Thought we’d never find daylight.’

  ‘But you did?’

  ‘The sewer came out halfway down a cliffside. Keera’s wing was bad but she forced herself to fly.’ Zoe shivered again. ‘She wanted to bring me to safety. Me, the girl who understood. That’s what she was thinking all the time, I know it.’

  Adam looked at Keera. You’re incredible. She was watching them both with clouded eyes, her breathing still so shallow. Hang in there, he thought. We’ve all got to hang in there.

  ‘Keera’s lost so much blood, and her head’s been hurting again, and she’s not eaten . . .’ Zoe’s arm curled feebly around him; Adam saw the trail of tears on her cheeks. ‘When she landed so badly, I thought that was it. That we’d both starve to death and never see anyone ever again. So, to find you and Zed . . .’

  ‘I thought I was hallucinating when I saw you too,’ Adam murmured. ‘After the way my head’s been messed with . . .’ He told her briefly about all he’d been through and his reunion with Zed – even about Zoe’s scaly, two-legged twin in the tank.