Road to Abaddon
The Metricia Series
Book One
To my family, who continue to believe.
First published in 2019 by Staircase Publishing
VincentHeeringa.com
© Vincent Heeringa
Auckland, New Zealand
ISBN: 9781095489475
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or digital, including photocopying, recording, storage in any information retrieval system or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
— CONTENTS —
PART ONE
Chapter 1 The Bomb
Chapter 2 Missing
Chapter 3 The Funeral
Chapter 4 Nassim Farouq
Chapter 5 TS Academy
Chapter 6 Rushball
Chapter 7 A revelation
Chapter 8 The surprising visitor
Chapter 9 Victory
PART TWO
Chapter 10 Sabotage
Chapter 11 Tricks and cheats
Chapter 12 A disturbing trade
Chapter 13 Strange prisoners
Chapter 14 Trust and obey
Chapter 15 Visiting the Baptistes
Chapter 16 Down, down, down!
Chapter 17 Up, up, up!
Chapter 18 The Schork
Chapter 19 Atlantica Special Ops
Chapter 20 Nassim’s escape
Chapter 21 Desert ambush
Chapter 22 The mystery in the mountains
PART THREE
Chapter 23 Napoleon, the dwarf
Chapter 24 Abaddon again
Chapter 25 Brothers: awaken!
Chapter 26 The Leap
Chapter 27 The reunion
Chapter 28 The dead and the buried
EXTRAS
Timeline
Glossary
Rules for Rushball
Chapter 1 Metricia Series: Book II
— PART ONE —
Chapter 1 - The Bomb
Jonah fell.
He’d clung as long as possible to the steel outcrop. But gravity tugged and tugged and the last millimetre of iron slipped from his fingers – and he fell.
Backwards. Arms flailing.
Around him, bits of plastic and dust fluttered like confetti and he thought he was floating. But it was an illusion.
He checked the sides of the damaged building and saw that it was speeding past, or more correctly, he was speeding past it, accelerating towards the ground, three-hundred metres below.
The wind shrieked in triumph and he pushed against it, righting himself so he could see how and when he would die. “Give me that, at least!” he tried to shout, but the words were sucked out of his mouth before they could form. Tears streamed across his face. It was getting hard to breathe.
Everyone wonders how they’ll die. Peacefully in bed, surrounded by grandchildren. In a hospital, by disease. Or perhaps heroically in battle. Not many people picture themselves plunging to the ground after a terrorist bomb has blown a hole in the side of a high-rise apartment.
That was quite a surprise.
It was doubly surprising that the bomb happened here, in Sky London, the capital city of Metricia. A terrorist bomb here was unfathomable.
And yet, here I am, thought Jonah as the ground raced towards him.
◆◆◆
The day had started so well.
Only a few hours earlier Jonah Titus Salvatore sat at the window of a hoverpod and was thrilled to watch the lights of the landing pad shrink into a circle. The pod rose higher and soon the lights became just white scratches on the surface of a much larger grey and silver plate. Nuevo Madrid, an ocean city of Metricia, spread out below him like an untidy combination of toys and circuit boards.
Jonah could see the entire place, a perfect ellipse of streets and blocks, arranged in patterns and curving lines. The buildings were stacked, chaotic yet somehow ordered. Just like a real city.
Except it wasn’t.
Nuevo Madrid was an island, but not even a real island either. More like a platform in the middle of the ocean, with no neighbours or land, just the Atlantic for thousands of kilometres around. The sides of Nuevo Madrid ended sharply like a medieval castle and plunged hundreds of metres down until they stopped at Zero Deck, a forbidden layer that joined the civilisation above to watery chaos below.
The hoverpod was rising fast now, speeding towards the blanket of clouds that covered the Earth. From his elevated position Jonah saw for the first time the frailty of his home, perched on carbon-fibre legs that pierced the ocean surface and drove with engineering precision into the rock beneath.
“It’s small,” he muttered, just to himself.
“Hmmmm?” said a man’s voice, deep, distracted.
“It’s small,” he said louder.
“What is?” said Jonah’s father, who sat at a large desk. This was no ordinary hoverpod. Normally pods had seats tightly arranged for squeezing in every possible passenger. Cattleships, people called them. The interior of Consul Shuttle One was spacious like you wouldn’t believe. Cushioned armchairs lined the sides and a sofa graced the centre. A liquor cabinet was recessed into the front wall. If we’re successful in Sky London that’ll be opened on the way back, thought Jonah.
His father, General Petreus Jon Salvatore, Metricia Consul to the First Peace Congress of Sky London, sat at the rear of the craft, with holoscreens displaying a dizzying array of data over the desk. 'Consul' was a new title for Petreus. A general, he was better known for blasting mutants into the sea and had more coloured bars on his jacket than a packet of snozzlebursts. Now it was peace that Petreus was fighting for. He was on his way to lead the first-ever peace conference between the Metricians and their Earth-bound enemies, the Landers. And Jonah was joining him!
Petreus flicked his fingers through the air, mesmerised by some holographic magic that appeared above his papers.
“Wait a sec’, are you playing Tetris?” Jonah scolded.
“Well … I …”
“Dad! Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Ooops, caught again,” said his father and swiped his hand above the desk. The hologram vanished. “Just, um, passing the time.”
“It’s a wonder you ever got promoted – you waste so much time on those ancient games.”
“Yes, dear,” his father said sarcastically, and they laughed.
The windows of the hoverpod were enveloped in cloud and Nuevo Madrid, now reduced to just a speck, vanished from sight.
Butterflies flipped in Jonah’s stomach. This was his first time in a hoverpod. In fact, it was the first time he’d left home. Previously, he’d seen his father’s blonde hair disappear through the doors of a military pod, sent on yet another mission to yet another war zone. Now that Jonah was seventeen, it was his turn to walk through the security gates, head down the gangplank and wave to the small band of well-wishers who stood at the viewing deck. With one last turn he’d flashed at a grin at his friends and then heard the thrilling hiss of the pod’s vacuum hatch.
Jonah pulled out his holovid for a quick, reassuring look at his mother, Lilian. He wished she was there to see them off. He imagined her waving along with the crowds, her eyes disappearing into that unmistakable smile. But she’d been gone for thirteen years now. Not even Metrician tek had a cure for cancer. The holovid showed a tall, slender woman walking along a street, turning her head and laughing. He had her green eyes and “big, kissable lips” (well, that’s what she told him anyway) and there was something about her smile that had worked its way into his genes. The rest of Jonah was all Petreus. People said they were the image of each other – a wide jaw and narrow should
ers and that crazy mop of blonde hair.
An authoritative voice made him click the holovid shut. “This is Captain Nogoni, from the flight deck, along with co-pilot Brian O’Brien and Airbot Candy. Welcome aboard this Presidential service to Aerotropolis London. Candy will be through in a minute to offer you refreshments, but before that we’ll be commencing Blast Sequence, so please find a comfy seat and buckle up. We don’t want any broken bones, now.”
Jonah leapt into an armchair and let it automatically buckle him in. A bell rang, followed by a rumble that exploded into a roar as the turbine fired, throwing the hoverpod into the sky.
“Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaa!” Jonah yelled, as he was thrust back into his chair.
The pod burst through the cloud and emerged into a blue sky with a brilliant yellow disk glowing in the east.
“The sun,” Jonah whispered.
It was a day of firsts: leaving home, flying in a hoverpod, and now seeing the sun. All his life, the sky was just a grey coat of cloud and ash. No one Jonah’s age had seen the sun unless they were lucky enough to take a ride like this. He tried to look at it, but burnt his eyes. Thermal lasers gave the same effect in school but this was special. This was the real thing!
The sun baked his face until he felt prickles of sweat on his brow. He’d read once that people used to sunbathe, lying in the ultra-violet light until their skin went brown with cancer. The old days were weird! Jonah thought. But with the warm rays of the golden disk baking his face, he sensed that he might have done the same.
Another bell rang and the belt slid back over Jonah’s shoulders. The pod was levelling off a little and Candy, the airbot, glided through the cabin offering drinks and treats: gut-boilers and snozzlebursts and something new, a raazbury tonsil tickler. Normally Jonah would have guzzled it all – but not today. The sun was too compelling. He could almost feel its gravity pulling him towards something bigger. He felt weird, on the cusp of something great.
Out of the window the sun gave the illusion of moving south as the pod arced its way toward Sky London. Already an hour had passed. It felt like minutes.
Petreus called him to the next porthole. “Better see this son,” he said.
Jonah slid over and looked out of the small window. He saw nothing at first, just a vast sea of blue with a bed of clouds and the sun, still an angry fire to the south. Then a dot appeared high above them and grew and grew until it became a diamond, long and narrow at its base, and with short, irregular spikes at the top. As they sped upwards, Sky London revealed itself in all its Teknological glory: a floating metropolis, with skyscrapers and pointed spires towering into the darkness. The ground was a thick platform, dotted with tiny pricks of light that Jonah supposed were windows for rooms and apartments. And underneath, a gigantic triangle of fibrous tentacles dangled like the root system of a massive tree.
“Water capture,” said Petreus. “The root system extracts water from the atmosphere and purifies it as it’s sucked up into the city. Cool, huh?”
Jonah was speechless.
The pod was approaching the city and still rising. Soon Jonah could see factories and parks and shopping malls and schools and houses and wooded forests, and a blue patch he supposed was a lake, all intersected by a patchwork of roads and monorails and cycle lanes. The military still called it by its proper name, Aerotropolis London, the first refuge to be built, and the most important. Along with eight other sky cities and four in the ocean, this was home to the last of the uninfected human race. Every other part of the world lay desolate, picked over by Landers infected by the Contagion. Mutant warlords ruled the Land like barbarians. But far beyond the Landers’ weapons, Sky London remained a beacon of hope: it was the beating heart of Metricia, the first refuge of the new human race.
In other words, it was the perfect place for a bomb.
◆◆◆
Jonah felt the explosion before he heard it. The shudder under his feet rolled into a violent wave, making his cabin lurch and the walls bulge with pressure. By the time the boom reached his ears the room was imploding. The door flew off its hinges and glass fired across his bed like shrapnel.
People say that after an explosion there follows a serenity, when the dust settles and your mind begins to make sense of what just happened. For Jonah, the settling seemed an eternity, as if life was in slow-mo. He raised his hands, pausing to wonder whose they were and why they were pierced with shards of metal and glass. He fumbled for reality: they’d been on the hoverpod, approaching Sky London. And then what? They’d landed in a skyport. That’s right, it was coming back. They’d been met by a delegation and driven somewhere … to a massive tower, like a needle … and inside were hundreds of apartments … and they’d been given a room, this room, with a breath-taking view over the city and the billowy clouds beyond. As if recalling a dream, Jonah remembered lying down to take a nap while his father attended a meeting and …
… then he was back with a bang: a siren blared, smoke billowed, people were screaming.
“We’ve been hit!” Jonah cried, staggering up from the floor.
Half-choking in the dust he called out: “I’m okay, Dad,
I’m okay.”
Then he stopped, fully conscious.
“Dad?”
Steadying himself against the remains of the door frame, Jonah edged outside. Through the haze he saw shattered ceiling panels and lights swinging on frayed wires. A body lay in his path, its head half splattered up the wall like a piece of art.
It was the sentry who’d been posted at their door. Jonah gagged. He wanted to run back inside but he gathered courage, stepped over the body and turned right, the direction he’d seen Petreus leave hours before. He inched forwards, trying to avoid the bloodied walls. The tang of burned flesh and plastic stung his nostrils.
“Dad!” he called. “Petreus!”
Jonah had once made a bit-vision tour of an old-fashioned abattoir where humans killed cattle, and he’d marvelled at the blood that squirted from the animals’ necks. But nothing could prepare him for this. Blood and hair and shreds of flesh littered the floor.
Suddenly, someone screamed from a doorway and a woman stumbled towards him, waving an arm with a red stump for a hand. Jonah yelped and tried to push her away but she grabbed at him maniacally.
“I’ve gotta go!” he yelled. “Someone will be here soon!” and he shoved her backwards and slammed her apartment door shut. She bashed from the other side but Jonah spun away and continued down the smoky hallway. It was hard-going. Clouded and scattered with debris, the passage was more like an obstacle course. He’d made only a few metres when a new voice stopped him.
“Hold it!”
Jonah froze.
“Turn around and state your name!”
He turned and saw a group of soldiers, their lasers pointing at his chest. Covered in exoskeleton armour with masks over their faces and antennae on their helmets, they looked like cockroaches.
“State your name, soldier!” demanded the leading ‘roach.
“I’m not a soldier,” Jonah spluttered. “I’m … I’m looking for my father, Consul Salvatore. He’s down there, gone to meet with the others.” Jonah pointed in the direction of the blast.
“Okay, kid,” said the soldier. “Stay here. We’ll find your father. It’s not safe down there, there’s plenty of dead. And who knows, they may strike again. This way boys!”
The soldiers forced their way past Jonah and disappeared into the smoke and chaos.
Jonah ground his teeth. All his life he’d been told to wait. Wait for the war to finish. Wait for his dad to come home. Wait for his turn to see him. His dad was down there, where the bomb just went off. No one could tell him to wait anymore!
He started to follow the cockroaches when the second explosion occurred. Technically speaking, it was smaller than the first – the Tekkies later confirmed it. But it felt like an H-bomb had been detonated. Jonah was somersaulted across the floor and landed on his stomach. This time he was awake and s
aw the soldiers vanish in a cloud of light. The walls crumbled. Fragments flew towards him, showering him in powder. A chunk of steel shaped like a pizza slice pierced his sneaker and buried itself in his foot. The tip glistened with blood.
What happened next was worse. With a metallic groan, the side of the building seemed to bend, then blow outwards, creating a massive hole. Light flooded in and wind shrieked out. Plastic and clothes and tiny bits of twisted steel flew past him, sucked into the air outside.
The wind tugged at Jonah too, pulling him across the floor like a sheaf of paper. He grabbed a bedside lamp but the wire tore from the wall and he continued to slide. Next, he reached for a bed-leg but it snapped in his hand. More debris blew past, drawn into the vortex. Jonah clawed at the floor and felt the shards of glass cut into his palms. His fingers left red streaks.
Hundreds of metres down, concrete smashed onto glass roofs.
The wind dragged and he was picking up speed, as if on the edge of a waterfall. His legs were pulled over the edge, but before his body followed he grabbed a steel reinforcing rod that pricked out like a tree root in a cliff-face. He screamed as the glass bit hard into his palms. He was dangling now, the wind swirling around his body.
Debris continued to blow past him and fall to the buildings below. He dared not look down. He looked instead for a place to swing his legs – a ledge, an outcrop, a random bit of steel.
Nothing was near.
Fear. Panic. Pain.
He tried to lift his leg back onto the ledge, like he used to do in the gym. He swung his body but the blood, oozing from his palms, greased the steel, and on the second swing he slipped.
It was like someone casually slid the rod through his fingers.
Confetti blew around him and for a moment a kind of euphoria took over. But then the windows of the building sped past and he knew he was falling. For the first time, he spun around to look at the roof below. It was rising fast.
Road to Abaddon Page 1
