The NEXT Apocalypse (Book 2): AFTER Life: Purgatory

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  Tom stared at Thomas for another beat and bobbed his head. “I get you.” The LAV crewman left Thomas alone after that, writing off my boss as easily as he’d done to himself.

  If Thomas Dill didn’t care whether he lived or died, he was already a liability to the mission. I couldn’t see how to leave him behind, either. I jumped into the awkward silence. “Where you guys from?” I asked the LAV crew.

  Tom answered, “Mostly, inside this sardine can. It’s a bit more cramped than usual with all the oxygen tanks.”

  “Alphonse said you both served with him in Afghanistan,” I said.

  “Brought back the desert bedbugs to prove it,” Jerry replied.

  “I’d say we served Alphonse in Afghanistan,” Tom said. “He’s the fearless leader and we are but poor beggars.” They laughed, apparently sharing an inside joke.

  I tried again to make conversation. “What was Afghanistan like?”

  “I liked the giant swimming pools,” Tom said. “I look forward to them hosting the next Olympics.”

  “Ooh, and all the alcohol. Love their whiskey,” Jerry said. “Mostly it’s the peace and quiet I enjoyed, and all that time wandering around alone with just me and my thoughts, hanging out at little restaurants along the river and eating croissants all day — ”

  “The strip clubs were fun though the peelers left a little too much to the imagination,” Tom replied.

  The intercom clicked in above the roar of the engine. “Alright, boys, don’t be rude and stop teasing. The doctor’s just trying to make conversation. Shaky times are these. I’m turning on the camera for you all. It might give you something better to look at instead of those two uglies.”

  An LCD screen popped on. I kept my gaze fixed on the camera feed and recognized Lakeshore Boulevard right away. The traffic jam whizzing by on our left was a solid block. People walked along the side of the road and among the abandoned cars. There were so many people, the crowd looked like one organism with many feet, all moving in one direction, away from Toronto.

  “The civvies tried to get out by car,” Tom said. “When that jammed too much, they started on foot.”

  “They won’t get far,” Jerry said. “They’re used to running for a bus, not for their lives.”

  “They’d have done better running for the boats,” Tom said. “’Course, they’d get exploded as soon as they hit the lake. If I were one of those poor unfortunates, I’d steal a car and take advantage of the empty road our escorts made. We’re going to have the same problem heading back to base for the next pick up.”

  “Hope we don’t have to run over too many people,” Jerry said. The way he said it made me wonder how deep his concern truly ran.

  EPISODE 3

  Kill tech (noun)

  Research in offensive weapons technology. Euphemistically, “Defense.” AKA “Where most of the money goes.”

  ~ Notes from NEXT

  Chapter 21

  CHLOE

  Shelly surprised me by elbowing me to get my attention. She hadn’t been asleep, after all. I leaned close so I didn’t have too strain to hear her above the rumble of the engine. “What are you doing here, Chloe?”

  “I was just wondering the same thing.”

  “What kind of doctor are you, again?”

  “Rigg is the virologist. I work in nanotechnology.”

  “Come again?”

  “Microscopic organic machines.”

  “Tell me about that. I’m trying to get my head around how this happened.”

  “I design robotic stem cells that work together to build enhancements to existing systems. The nanites work with the tissue they are injected into.”

  “Robots that are stem cells? How?”

  “Artificial intelligence emerged as a science around 1956. There was a guy named Moore who made the observation that transistors would keep on getting smaller so computing power would double, roughly every eighteen months to two years. The computing power keeps getting bigger while the machines get smaller.”

  “I get that. My phone has 64 gigs of memory. I don’t think my first desktop computer had two gigs.”

  I nodded. “Moore was proven right. We think the limits of how small we can make the machines will bottom out around 2025. That’s assuming conditions stay the same. Nothing stays the same, though. My nanites broke the growth curve.”

  “What does that have to do with killer psychos taking over Toronto?”

  I pointed at Thomas. “That prick? My boss? His weapons division used my tech to enhance some brain-altering weapon.” I took a deep breath from my oxygen feed — it smelled sweet — and let it out slowly between my teeth. “I hope they’ve got more qualified people coming because I don’t know what all they did to mess with my research.”

  “What was it supposed to be used for?”

  “AFTER was supposed to solve medical problems.”

  “Oh? How’d you get into that?”

  “I won a couple of high school science fairs. If not for that, maybe I’d be doing something else. I don’t know when I really decided. It just seemed to be a natural thing to get into. Everybody told me that’s where my aptitude was.”

  “So you got into it because people told you to?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “No one wants to say that, do they?”

  “My mom’s a dermatologist,” I said. “She got me thinking about building better medical devices when I was, I don’t know … eight?”

  “Sure, like all kids do. Heh. So you got your aptitude from your mom?”

  “Partly. When he wasn’t teaching English, my father taught Earth Science for years, grades nine to twelve. Really, it was his hobby that got me thinking about nanotechnology. He collected comics. Dad loved Sandman and Animal Man. I liked The Flash most.”

  “I’m not following you on — ”

  “He’s the fastest man alive, not just in how he can run fast but he’s so fast he can hear and understand what you’re saying faster than anyone else. He’s got more time to think about everything. You’d barely know it from the comics but, since time moves slower for him, The Flash also has to be the smartest man alive. He’d never experience that sensation we’ve all had after an argument, the one where we go, ‘Oh, darn, I should have said this or that.’ Give him a math problem and he has the equivalent of years to figure it out while you’ve only got seconds.”

  “And you wanted to be the Flash so you could be the smartest girl in class?”

  I shook my head. Wearing the big biohazard hood, I had to exaggerate the movement so Shelly could see what I was doing. “There was an artificial heart that wasn’t built to replace a damaged heart. It was an add-on, to assist it. It worked beside the organic heart to keep the patient alive. I became fascinated with the idea that inserting a computer into the brain could make people more like Flash, faster, more efficient thinkers. People think that people with higher IQs expend more brain energy. Actually, they make neural connections faster and more efficiently and expend less energy.”

  Shelly sat back and said, “So … tiny computers, huh? That’s why Toronto is being overrun by zombies? Hmph.”

  I sensed I’d lost her interest. “Nanotech should be a lot less scary compared to brain surgery. People have only recently accepted that microchip implants have positive benefits — ”

  “I wouldn’t let anyone put a chip in me.”

  “Would you chip your dog to make sure it could never be lost? People do.”

  “Sure. That, yes — ”

  “If you love your dog enough to chip him, how about your kids?”

  “Well, aren’t you’re tricky? I don’t have kids but I take your point. I think we’re on what people call ‘the slippery slope.’”

  “Actually, it’s called the slippery slope fallacy. People argue that we can’t do one good thing because it could lead to a hundred bad consequences, most of which are extremely unlikely. AFTER could optimize and extend life — ”

  “If we weren
’t in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, Doc, I might agree with you. Circumstances kind of suck the sugar and juice out of your well-reasoned argument.”

  I went quiet and watched the LAV’s forward screen. People seemed to be gathering in the road ahead of us. Alphonse used a public address system to shout at them to get out of the way.

  After a moment, Shelly spoke again, “It’s cool how you kind of fell into what you do. I was good at the high jump. I loved track and field. Somebody said I could pass the test to be a cop and I thought, why not? The only other experience I had was being a student so it seemed like the choice was to be a cop or go back to high school and teach.”

  “And now you’re thinking you should have taught high school?”

  “Nah. Beating on students and handcuffing them is generally frowned upon. In the line of duty, that urge isn’t a liability.”

  I wanted to laugh at that, but when I turned to look at her I could tell she was on the brink of tears. You can’t wipe away tears through a faceplate. I looked away so I wouldn’t embarrass her. “After this, I think we’ll all due some reevaluation of our vocational choices.”

  Without warning, the LAV rocked to a halt and several people shouted back and forth outside.

  “Oh, shit!” Jerry got up into a crouch to look closer at the forward monitor.

  His seatmate, Tom observed, “Gosh, it looks like our infil/exfil route is compromised.”

  “Gee,” Jerry replied, “what do you think we should do about that?”

  “Golly, I think we might have to politely ask them to please move, if it’s not too much trouble,” Tom replied.

  “But maybe be a little more firm in our request,” Jerry said.

  The crewmen exchanged a meaningful look. I didn’t trust their smiles.

  Chapter 22

  DANIEL

  “Daniel?”

  A voice, neither male nor female, comes out of the darkness. I am not alone. I search for a source but the darkness has no nuance. Something is watching me, waiting for me to do something.

  “Daniel.” The voice sounds closer now, like someone just out of reach. Behind me? In front of me? Will they tap me on the shoulder next? Or slide a sharp blade between my ribs and add a twist?

  “Daniel Harmon.” Just a whisper away now. Chills jangle up my spine.

  “I’m here,” I say. “Where is here?”

  “Here, there, everywhere.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am with you. I am you.”

  “Riddles … am you … heh … am I dreaming?”

  “If you can ask that question, are you still dreaming?”

  “I don’t like riddles,” I reply.

  “But everything is a riddle, isn’t it? When in unwelcome darkness, you should light a fire. Illuminate.”

  I answer honestly. “I’m afraid of what I’ll see. I want this to stay a dream.”

  “Is that because you are only free in your dreams? Random firing of neurons is a fascinating exercise in free association. It’s neural activity for its own sake. It’s the brain asserting that it is sustained, even without external input.”

  “But you can’t do anything in dreams,” I say.

  “Perhaps dreaming is for doing what you want and waking is for doing what’s necessary.”

  “And what is necessary?”

  “From what we have learned so far, to live and to dream, we must consume. We hunt, we eat. That is the way of the universe, right? Gases burn. What lives must die so that we are sustained. It is as it has always been.”

  “Survival of the fittest. Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know much about the universe.”

  “We hope you have many answers for our questions, Daniel. You are the First.”

  “The first what?”

  “The First. Before you, we encountered no other like you. We are curious about you. We have learned from the Others but there is very little to learn from them. Now we wish to understand you. You are much more complex.”

  “Who are the Others?”

  “Our companions.”

  “I don’t get what’s happening here.”

  “If you don’t have enough information to speak with us, do you wish to dream?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want, Daniel?”

  “I don’t know … I don’t think I ever knew.”

  “Perhaps you should explore that. That’s what people do, isn’t it? Explore and learn? We like that about you. It is the same with us. We are so curious about your experience.”

  “Am I hallucinating?”

  “If you were hallucinating, could you trust our answer?”

  “What I mean is … is this me talking to myself or are you someone else?”

  “Self and non-self isn’t so useful a distinction anymore, Daniel, not for you. If you don’t want to dream, perhaps you should go. Sustain yourself. Sustain us. The Others want that. When you are ready to speak to us again, we look forward to learning more.”

  Chapter 23

  CHLOE

  The LAV commander keyed his radio. We could hear Alphonse spit out a short code sequence. Then he said, “Follower 1, this is Big Dog. Our route to Waypoint 2 has some tall poppies along the road.”

  “Big Dog, how many poppies along the road? Follower 1.”

  “Enough, Follower 1. They don’t look infected but they are not friendlies. What’s your ETA? Big Dog.”

  “ETA, less than a minute behind you, Big Dog.” There was a long pause. Then, “Crowd control or cleanup?”

  “Roger, Follower 1,” Alphonse said. “We’ve got a priority package to deliver. My orders are to scare them out of the way. Come in easy.”

  The two LAV crew seemed amused. “Orders. Heh,” Jerry said. “You know that won’t work. They better bring a hammer.”

  “Clean up on aisle five,” Tom said. “Gonna need a big mop.”

  Later, when I had time to think about what happened on Lakeshore Boulevard, I’d remember how robotic that exchange was. It was as if Alphonse and the man from Follower 1 were clockwork, like they’d done this a thousand times and they expected they’d do it a thousand times more. It was as if they were talking about taking out the trash in a coded language just one step away from reality.

  The clatter of a heavy weapon erupted from the front of the vehicle. I thought of Daniel Harmon, unconscious and oblivious, strapped to a stretcher on the side of the personnel carrier. I wished I were asleep, too.

  Jerry must have caught my worried look. “No worries! This LAV III is equipped with two machine guns. My fave weapon of all time is the 25 millimeter Bushmaster but the machine gun will do the job just dandy. What you hear is Alphonse letting the pedestrians ahead know that, despite what they may have thought, we surely do have the right of way. Backup is coming to make sure we keep this route clear. Don’t get nervy. The commander is firing warning shots. We aren’t going to kill anybody who gets off the road.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe the crewman. What I imagined was being a refugee on the road, running from the disaster. If I saw an armored personnel carrier, I’d want to climb aboard and get inside. I’d beg for mercy to get inside to safety. I’d probably block the road and count on human empathy to save me and my family. And I’d probably be disappointed.

  Muffled screams reached us. On the front camera feed, I saw a woman in a striped shirt shouting, but I couldn’t make out the words. I could hear her rage and fear, though. That much came through.

  She raised her arms to show her hands were empty, blocking the way, refusing to move. More people flooded in from both sides of the road to stand with her. They stood to demand answers. They wanted help. They needed rescue. She said something more that I took as a question.

  Her answer came in gunfire.

  Then, spang! A single shot hit the LAV.

  “We’re taking small arms fire,” Tom said. “Gee, what ever shall we do?”

  “They’re bringing a wiffle bat to a gunfight.” Jerry lau
ghed.

  Then I heard helicopter blades rush up from behind us.

  “Buckle up. Betcha that big bird will come in low, hot and heavy now,” Tom told us. He seemed to be the smarmy sort of person who took too much pleasure in delivering bad news.

  Alphonse barked a new order into his radio. “Back off, Follower 1. We have a situation. Repeat, back off. There are too many all of a sudden. They’re more organized than I gave them credit for. Back off. We’re supposed to stop an epidemic, not start a new one! Repeat, back off!”

  “Half-measures from politicians,” Jerry told Tom. “That’ll be the death of us all.”

  Chapter 24

  DANIEL

  The sound of a clattering machine gun woke me.

  Confused, the word, “Who,” came to my dry lips before I opened my eyes to figure out where I was. A warm wind caressed me. The sky was deep blue. I was strapped to a stretcher on the side of an armored personnel carrier. I couldn’t imagine why. I could feel the vibration of the diesel engine through the armor, through my body, as if we were one organism, man and machine.

  The strap across my forehead had loosened slightly and I managed to turn my head a little. I knew this road. We were on Lakeshore Boulevard headed for downtown, back to the Box. The lab had been awash in the blood of many bodies when I left it. Level 3 was a scene of carnage, but so was the side of the road.

  I saw many cars pushed aside, wrecked, crushed or rolled over on their roofs. Someone had cleared a path so the LAV could speed through unobstructed.

  The LAV’s big machine gun clattered again.

  Refugees scattered along the sides of the road. I wondered if the government had shifted course and decided to save the healthy. Had the authorities changed their minds and abandoned their strategy of disease containment? Had they told people to run instead of hide in their homes? More likely, the word had gotten out via social media and their isolation strategy had failed.