New Atlantis Bundle, Books1-3

by Glover, Nhys

  She didn’t know what had happened, what it was about the clones that had so disturbed him. But she now felt she repulsed him. That rejection rocked her to the core.

  I won’t cry! I will not cry!

  But tears began to mingle with pellets of water showering down on her from all directions, until she couldn’t stop them. Wracking sobs broke free from deep inside her. She hadn’t felt this level of pain for two hundred years, and had thought she’d never have to feel it again. But it was back, as soul destroying as before, shredding her carefully maintained peace of mind into ragged pieces.

  Unable to keep the memories at bay, they surged up to overwhelm her.

  I woke to the cold and the silence. For a few minutes, I didn’t know where I was or what had happened. Then I remembered the sickness that had been plaguing me for days, sucking my strength, until I could barely lift my arms, or move one foot in front of another.

  I wasn’t the only one. The whole family complained of feeling run down and exhausted. Dad said someone at the docks had told him there was a virus going around that was knocking people about. We should be all right, though, because we were healthy and ate well. Any bugs would get beaten back by our immune systems. So Dad said.

  But the last thing I remembered was going to bed because I could barely stand up. Mum had kissed me on the forehead and said she’d bring me up a nice bowl of soup when she got a moment. But even she seemed to be struggling with whatever this bug was. Her face was pasty, and a fine film of sweat covered her lined forehead. And though the kitchen was warm, because of the agar, it wasn’t hot enough to make you sweat.

  So I went to bed, and the next thing I knew it was morning. Or daytime. And the air was cold on my face where it poked out from under my winter-weight duvet. There was a rank smell in the air, and when I sniffed some more, I realised, with mortification, that I’d wet the bed.

  I tried to jump out of bed and get changed. But my body wouldn’t respond. It was still sluggish from the virus. Eventually, I managed to drag myself out of bed, and change into a well-worn, but warm tracksuit. By then my stomach was screaming at me to feed it, and I was so thirsty no amount of swallowing would wet my dry mouth.

  Step by wobbly step, I made my way down the steep flight of stairs, in our old fisherman’s cottage, to the kitchen. I assumed it was too early for anyone to be up yet. But that didn’t sit right, somehow. Mum was always the first up, getting the agar going, so she could get breakfast on, and warm the house before the rest of us got up. Jimmy whinged about having to chop firewood for the agar. But without that old thing, we would have been done for.

  The agar was cold. And when I looked out the kitchen window, I could see a light fall of snow covering our tiny backyard. That was why it was so quiet. Snow always muffled sound.

  After downing about a litre of water, I rummaged through the pantry, and found a haunch of salted beef. I cut several large slabs off, and devoured them. At last the shakes began to ease up, and my legs felt stronger under me. I was nowhere near healthy. My body still felt like it had fallen off a cliff, but at least it was moving more easily now that the hunger and thirst were appeased.

  Maybe Mum was still sick. I decided to go up and ask her if she wanted me to get the agar going and make some breakfast for everyone. At twenty, I was the adult child in the household, and took on a lot of the responsibilities Mum couldn’t manage.

  Climbing back up those stairs was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It wasn’t just the fatigue and weakness that made those stairs feel as if I was climbing Mt Everest. There was also a feeling that I didn’t want to get to the top, as if there was something waiting for me there that I didn’t want to see. I started to breathe through my mouth half way up, because that rank smell was in the air up there, and it reminded me of the dampness in my bed.

  I knocked softly on my parent’s door, the quiet so intense I didn’t want to disturb it. When I got no reply, I opened the door slowly, and peeped around the edge. They were there, asleep in each other’s arms. They had always been a demonstrative couple, and I’d outgrown the embarrassment of seeing them cuddle and kiss. Now I just envied them, and hoped one day I’d find a man I wanted to hold close while I slept.

  ‘Mum,’ I called softly. But there was no movement from the bed. I crept across the room and looked down at them. Their eyes were sunk deep into their sockets, and there was bruising around the ridges as if someone had given them both two black eyes. The same bruising made their cheeks look concave. But it was the blueness around the mouth that finally got through to me.

  Not asleep. Dead. And that rank smell … that was death. I should have recognised it. Maybe I had, somewhere deep down. But I didn’t want to go there, so I’d fooled myself into believing it was something else, something far less awful.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, staring down at them, hoping to see their chests rise and fall, or a little twitch that would tell me there was still life here. Eventually, fearfully, I reached out and touched Dad’s face. It was cold… icy cold.

  Panicking then, I ran down the hall to my brother’s room. He was seventeen and had started to go out with Dad on the fishing trawler in the last few months. It was a sign that he was almost a man, and in those terrifying moments, all I wanted was someone I could turn to… a man who could be strong and tell me what to do. The girls would be frightened, and I would have to be the strong one for them. But Jimmy would want to be the man, and I would let him. Because I felt weak…

  The smell told me the truth before my eyes did. Jimmy wasn’t just sleeping, either. Now the panic became a chill that froze me in place. I was the only adult left. I would have to be strong for the girls.

  Finally, when I brought the terror under control, I moved slowly along the hall until I reached the girls’ room, next door to mine. They were twelve and ten, and still had bunk beds to save space. Our cottage was not large.

  I started crying the moment I opened the door and the smell hit me. I didn’t have to be strong for the girls. I didn’t have to be strong for anyone.

  All dead.

  Somehow, I staggered down the stairs and went to the wet room, pulled on my coat and wellies, and went out into the snow. I had to get help. I couldn’t deal with this myself. Mr Fitzpatrick next door would know what to do. He was on the council, and he was always full of plans and ideas. He would know what to do.

  But the awful silence was everywhere. And as I moved from house to house, the reality of my situation became clear. There was no one else to tell me what to do. Because they were all dead.

  And I was the only one left alive in my village. Maybe the only one left alive in the world. It was worse than a nightmare…because I couldn’t wake up!

  Luke lay across his comfortable, new bed staring up at the ceiling. In a little more than an hour, he guessed, he had gone from the sublime heights of passion and bliss, to the depths of despair and confusion. That roller coaster ride had left him exhausted, dislocated from his body in some weird way. Like he was one of these artificial people. These clones. The warm and beautiful body he’d shared such mind-blowing sex with, was not real. She was some kind of monster created in a laboratory by Nazi scientists.

  His skin crawled at the thought of kissing and touching that monster. Being inside that monster. He was in a nightmare from which he couldn’t wake up. Four days of this nightmare, where nothing was as it seemed.

  Scrubbing his face with his hands, he listened to the shower still running. He had expected her to be gone by now. Showered clean of all evidence of their time together and then gone, so he could have his turn washing away the taste and smell of her from his body.

  But the shower went on and on. And in the end, he went to check on her. He opened the bathroom door slowly, not wanting to be seen. The room was filled with steam, and was as humid as a jungle in the ‘wet’. Slowly, silently, he crept further into the room, looking for signs of her presence. Her clothes were piled on the floor, discarded and yet pristin
e. How did they do that? How did they do any of this?

  He turned toward the shower cubicle with its glass front. That was when he saw her through the steam, crumpled like her clothes, on the floor of the cubicle, her body quaking under the intensity of her pain.

  In a flash, he went from repulsion to tender remorse. Whatever she was, she was also gentle and sweet. And he had hurt her. Memories of his mother, huddled in just such a way after his father had beaten her, flooded his mind.

  Like father like son. He’d sworn to himself he would never be like him. Never use his superior strength on anyone weaker than himself. But though he had not physically harmed this woman, or whatever she was, he had still harmed her.

  Filled with self-loathing and regret, he opened the shower door and reached down for her. ‘Come on, Faith. Let’s get you out of here.’

  The look of devastation made him squirm. ‘Sorry, sorry, I just meant to have a quick shower… I will go…’ Her words broke his heart. She thought he meant to get her out of his apartment. That he was throwing her out.

  Words wouldn’t do it, he realised. They were misunderstood. He pressed the off button in the ultramodern shower and reached for a towel, white of course, on the railing behind him. Then he reached down and took her hand, drawing her slowly to her feet. She was so small. How could he have hurt something so small and defenceless?

  He draped the towel around her wet, shaking body, and then pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her, as he rested his cheek on her soaking, bedraggled hair.

  She didn’t return his embrace, staying curled up inside herself. But she didn’t try to pull away. And that was something.

  ‘I’m sorry, Faith. I’m so damn sorry for hurting you. I… I just don’t know what to make of this place. You. I made love to you, and you’re not real. I hold you like this, and I think of you as some reanimated science experiment. It’ll take me time to get my head around it all. I’m sorry… Come on, let’s get you out of here.’

  He led her out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. Not caring that she was wet, he lay her on his bed and joined her there, curling her in to his right side, away from his injury that still stung from the workout he’d given it.

  She lay in his arms like a broken doll, silent tears still wracking her frame. For someone who had seemed, up to an hour ago, so calm and contained, this uncontrolled emotion was shocking. He felt helpless to aid her. Helpless to stop the tears.

  ‘Shhhh Angel, it’s okay. Everything will be okay, I promise…’ he offered her, not knowing whether anything he said was the truth.

  After what felt like hours, she finally quietened, and lay still in his arms.

  ‘I am sorry for my display. Thank you for comforting me. I will leave you in peace now.’ Her voice, when it came was soft and shaky, as she eased away from him. Though he wanted her gone, his arms clamped tightly onto her and held her in place. What was he doing?

  ‘Talk to me Faith,’ he found himself saying.

  After a half-hearted attempt to escape, she lay stiff in his arms again. ‘What do you want me to say? That I am human? That I am real? You can see for yourself that truth. Do you want me to make excuses for what I have done? Allowing myself to be integrated into a new body? I cannot. I did what I had to. What we all had to, to survive.

  ‘You cannot imagine what it was like back then. I woke up one morning, after being unwell for a few days, to find everything still and quiet. Nothing moved. Snow blanketed the ground outside our cottage, and it was unusually cold inside. I wandered around looking for my family. They were all there, dead in their beds. I went outside looking for someone, anyone, who was still alive. Like me. The whole village was still. Everyone dead … but me ...

  ‘I think I went a little insane. For a while … until I heard a boat engine. I ran so fast then, even though my body was as weak as a kitten. And from the dock, I saw a small boat coming into our inlet. When I saw it, I had hope. I was not the only one in the world. Someone else still lived.

  ‘He was a fisherman from one of the villages further up the coast. A middle aged man, a father… He had woken up, just like me, to find everyone else dead. He was as glad to see me as I was to see him. He took care of me. And he put me on his boat, and we sailed away from the only home I had ever known. I left my parents, my sisters and brother, dead in their beds. I should have buried them. I wish I had buried them. But I didn’t have the strength. And the ground was frozen...

  ‘Over the next few days, we worked our way down the coast, looking for survivors. We found a couple. One in a thousand, was what they later told us.

  ‘We eventually arrived in London. London, which had once been home to millions, was by my time, populated by only eight hundred thousand. We found eighty survivors there, some of them already forming groups. Most of us took over Winsor Castle, because it was away from the decaying corpses, and we set up a radio broadcast frequency to attract the attention of other survivors.

  ‘It was about two weeks before what was left of the military found us, and moved us here. We were all so sick and traumatised by what we had been through. Some people took their own lives. I thought about it. But life seemed too precious to waste.

  ‘When they offered us the clone bodies, we did not think twice. Within a month or two, we were all young and healthy again. And we were determined to make a new start. And we did. We created something beautiful, serene and moral out of the wreckage of that world. I do not regret taking on this ‘science experiment’ of a body. It, they, have served me well.’

  For a long time, neither of them spoke. Luke felt blindsided. Every word she had uttered was truth. He couldn’t deny it. Somehow, all of this was truth. His world had destroyed itself, and he, by some miracle, had found himself in a ‘brave new world’ very different to the one Huxley wrote about. But he was certainly a ‘savage’, and he fitted in here as well as Tarzan did in the ball rooms of the aristocracy.

  How could he possibly become one of these people? Their serene and peaceful life would bore him silly within weeks. Not that he needed a war to occupy him. He would be more than happy to find out that war genuinely was a thing of the past, as Faith claimed. But to live on and on, with just sunshine and smiles… not likely!

  He would have been more suited to the time after that great plague, when the world was in chaos. In that time, he would have been useful. His skills would have been valued. Here, and now, everything that defined him was an anathema to these people.

  If he actually had crossed time, and found himself in a future world, then the answer was the same for him as it was if this world was just a fabrication.

  He had to find a way out.

  His world was still out there, and he had to get back to it. Only there, did he make sense. Only there, in that violent and chaotic world, could he create internal order and achieve goals. Here… he was as useless and unwanted as a sixth toe.

  Chapter Eleven

  Over the next few days, Luke made a fast recovery, and began to explore his surroundings with Faith’s help. By some unspoken agreement, they didn’t have sex again. It left them both too vulnerable and confused, he reasoned.

  Instead, they enjoyed each other’s company as friends. And the more time Luke spent with her, the more ‘real’ she became. Whatever her body was, the soul that dwelled within it was beautiful and special. And unlike his usual ‘hit and run’ approach to relationships, he grew more and more attached to her the longer they were together.

  One day they went to visit the school. As they walked past the crowd of adults milling around outside the playground, watching the children at play, Luke was struck by the strangeness of it.

  ‘What are they all doing here?’ he asked, as they entered the building by the main entrance at the side.

  ‘They come from all over the Confederacy to see the children. You have to understand that we have not seen children here for more than two hundred years. They are a miracle to us.’ Faith led him through the large lobby toward
the glassed-off classroom he could see ahead.

  ‘I can’t get that. Not having kids around. Kids are what give us a hope for the future. If there were no kids, why would anyone go on? I’ll probably make a lousy father, but I want lots of kids. And I’ll do my best by them. Better than my dad, at least.’ He stopped beside her at the glassed classroom door and looked into the room that didn’t look that different to the classrooms he’d known as a child.

  Faith turned to look at him, and the horror he saw there gutted him. She thought he’d make a lousy father, too. No doubt his treatment of her, and his career choice, had convinced her of that.

  ‘I’ll be okay as a dad. I’m not pure evil, no matter what you’ve seen me do.’ He couldn’t keep the defensive note out of his voice.

  ‘I am sure you would…’

  ‘But?’ he challenged her angrily.

  ‘But your cells were irreparably compromised when I brought you through the Portal. You can never father children, Lukas. Not now. I am sorry.’

  The shock of her revelation knocked the air out of his lungs, and his legs nearly collapsed under him. She reached out to support him, but he jerked away from her.

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you just leave me there to die? You take me away from my world, my mission, my purpose. You bring me to this world of freaks, and then you tell me I’m fuckin’ sterile? Geezus, woman, what have you done to me!’

  Just then, Cara came down the corridor toward them. She must have heard his angry diatribe, for she stepped in quickly.

  ‘Luke, good to see you up and around. Let’s go to the common room, huh? Faith, can you go see if Millie needs any help?’ She ushered him away, leaving Faith frozen, unable to move from the spot.

  ‘What is it with you, Luke? Do you get off on hurting vulnerable women? Is that what this is about?’ Cara snapped at him, the moment the common room door was closed.

  Luke reeled back as if she’d struck him. Then he got as far away from her as he could.