Second Activation (The Activation Series Book 2)

by Darren Wearmouth

  A window on the side of the boat exploded inward and glass shattered across the small deck. A single loud crack echoed in the distance.

  “Shit, that sounded like a high-powered rifle,” I said. “Keep your heads down.”

  As we headed south, more bursts of fire followed. I could just about identify the muzzle flashes sparking around the distant vehicle lights. A couple of tracer rounds whizzed overhead, but we took no more hits and powered around a headland, out of sight.

  I joined Jack at the front of the boat. “Great call on the boat. They can’t have been far behind.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t arrange a welcoming party when we get back to dry land.”

  “They don’t know it’s us. We can’t be the only people left alive around here.”

  “Bit of a coincidence, though?” Brett said.

  “Unless they get a boat, we’ll outstrip them by miles, and they won’t know our docking point.”

  I could understand his paranoia, but our current situation felt relatively safe compared to Bernie’s apartment in Queens, a dark highway, or the pit of bodies that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Jack kept the boat a couple hundred yards from shore, and we cut through the water at speed. I breathed in fresh air as wind rushed against my face. A surge of positivity ran through me. For now we had escaped, and I was sure we were ahead of the game.

  “We should have killed Anthony when we had the chance,” Jack said. “I can’t see him backing off any time soon.”

  “Fuck him. We’ve a clear focus now. Hart Island. We’ll collect Morgan and his gang if they’re still alive, and end this thing.”

  “Who’s Morgan?” Brett asked.

  “He leads a survivor group in New York,” Jack said. “We can gather extra manpower for an assault.”

  “There’s only two GA on the island,” Brett said. “If we get there first, I’m sure you can deal with them. I don’t think we should waste time finding people we don’t need.”

  Jack glanced across to me and frowned. I knew he wouldn’t like Brett trying to dictate proceedings. But Brett had crucial information, and we were all in this mission together. The local team was heading to Hart Island, and more ominously, larger forces were on their way, and would possibly sweep all of us away if they caught us.

  “Brett’s right,” I said. “We waste no time and get there first. After that, we’ll round up Morgan’s group, if they’re still around, and work out how we deal with the rest of GA.”

  The clouds broke overhead as we continued toward Ohio. Bright moonlight provided good visibility of buildings lining the shore and small islands on the lake. For the first time in days, I felt free from the threat of a surprise attack from around any corner.

  I sat next to Brett on the plastic-covered foam bench and leaned forward with my head in my hands, feeling a sudden release of tension. I groggily looked up at Jack, who sat in the control chair, slumped forward resting on his elbows until a wave jerked him upright.

  For the next twenty minutes, Brett and I had a nostalgic chat about sport and our former lives. It turned out we both loved football and had been in the same stadium on a few occasions, supporting opposite teams. We even liked the same pubs in London, like the Sherlock Holmes on Northumberland Avenue and The Ship Tavern near Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I’d warmed to him since our first meeting on Otter Creek Road and felt pleased we had him on-board.

  Brett joined Jack at the front of the boat. I yawned and rested my head on the bench.

  Jack shoved me awake. I blinked to focus on our surroundings. The boat gently rocked on the water. Brett lay snoozing on the opposite bench.

  I sat up and groaned. “Where are we?”

  “I’ve taken us south for the last hour. We might be hitting Ohio soon.”

  “How about fuel?”

  “I think we’ll be okay if the gauge is right.”

  I stood and headed for the wheel. “Get your head down. I’ll take over.”

  Jack nudged past me and collapsed onto the bench. His body entirely relaxed.

  I increased the throttle, felt the bite of blades in the water, and we lurched forward. A compass close to the steering wheel showed our heading, and I adjusted the direction to south.

  I decided to let both Jack and Brett sleep for as long as possible. Dawn broke just before six in the morning, and they both must have gotten at least two hours. I glanced back at Jack and wondered about his recent actions and temperament.

  He stirred in his sleep and raised his arm, like he was weakly fighting off an invisible fly. I hoped he would keep cool with whatever happened now in our bid to trash the local GA operation. The action at Ron’s house had shown that when Jack was cornered, he struck back. I needed to channel him in the right way.

  In the growing light, only the occasional bird swooping up and down gave any sign of life. The coastline curved ahead of us to the right, and I spotted a small group of islands to our port side.

  I angled the boat toward a large island with a prominent landmark, a huge Doric column with a viewing platform at the top, stretching over three hundred feet into the sky. I followed the island’s rocky coastline, looking for a suitable place to dock. Jack must have felt a slight variation in course as the water rocked the boat in the stronger current. He yawned, stretched on the bench, and looked around.

  “Wasn’t the coast to our right?” he said.

  “Yeah, but I found an island—might give us a chance for a break and a fuel stop.”

  He joined me by the wheel and rubbed his eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Couple of hours. I’m thinking we dock the boat somewhere secluded and scavenge for fuel and food.”

  “Or find a bigger boat. It’s the safest I’ve felt since landing,” Jack said.

  The coastline began to turn inward in the direction of the huge monument. Jack and I both stared at the structure, gleaming white in the early morning sunshine and surrounded by lush grass. It looked like an inviting place to go ashore.

  Our chatter woke Brett. He joined us at the front of the boat and started at the sight of the monument. “What’s that?”

  “No idea,” I said. “But we’re going to find out.”

  I eased down the throttle and approached the rocky shore. Jack shouldered his rifle and scanned the area through the sights. The boat’s hull scraped over a rock, and he gripped the side to maintain balance. Brett dropped over the side into waist-high water, gasped, and pulled the boat toward the shore, using the uneven lake bed as leverage. The hull juddered over several more rocks, but we were close enough to dry land.

  Jack slung on his pack and splashed into a foot of water. He ran over to a small copse of trees and dropped to one knee, taking up a covering position. I threw Brett his rifle, and he joined Jack, awkwardly hunching into the same position and held his rifle forward, away from his shoulder. I gave him full marks for trying.

  I secured the boat’s rope to a concrete bollard and visually swept the area of manicured grass surrounding the monument.

  “I doubt GA will follow us here,” Jack said.

  “They haven’t got the manpower to search these islands and get Hart Island working at the same time, if they want to do it in three days,” Brett said.

  His statement reminded me that we couldn’t hang around and lose our advantage. I looked toward the distant coastline of the mainland. “I’ve a feeling Anthony and Jerry won’t give up that easily. That monument has a platform at the top. We can have a quick look before heading off.”

  “What’s the plan?” Jack asked.

  “Grab fuel and supplies and hit the mainland.”

  Moving slowly across the grass, I aimed left. A starling burst out of a tree and flew away. Boats gently rocked in their moorings on the other side of the thin section of island, and the rising sun reflected off the lake.
Above the monument’s grand entrance, a plaque read: “Perry’s Monument—South Bass Island.” A twisted male corpse lay face down on the grass next to the open entrance.

  Jack crouched and glanced to his right. “There’re a couple of places through the trees. Try them first for food and drink?”

  I spun back toward our boat after hearing a distant cry of anguish. “You two hear that?”

  Brett fumbled with his rifle and aimed at the trees, close to where we’d docked. Something or someone wailed.

  “It could be an animal,” Jack said.

  “Sounded more human to me,” Brett said.

  Jack nodded and we slowly made our way toward a group of cedar trees, rifles ready to fire.

  “The one on the right, by the base of the trunk,” Jack said.

  A shoulder and leg poked out. Somebody sat with his or her back against it.

  “Put your hands up and show yourself,” I shouted.

  An arm jerked out. Fingers spread and trembling.

  “Show yourself, now. Don’t make us come over there,” Jack said.

  The figure slowly rose, and a man with a thick mustache, greasy black hair, and bloodstained cream shirt and trousers turned to face us. He clenched his teeth and stared at me with wild, piercing eyes. He mumbled something and staggered toward us as if drunk, clasping a carving knife in his right hand.

  “That’s far enough—drop the knife,” I said.

  The man let out a choking sound and jabbed the knife at his own throat. He paused, shook his head, and forced the knife out in front of him with both hands. It looked like he was battling an invisible force.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Jack called.

  The man’s concentration on the knife broke, and he gazed up. “I’ve . . . I’ve killed her. I’m trying to stop me. I can’t.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I replied and glanced across to Brett. “Do you know what’s up with him?”

  Brett shook his head. “I dunno. Is he pissed out of his head?”

  The man started tottering away, taking short footsteps, and waved us forward. “Come, come—I’ll show you. Come.”

  I looked at Jack and frowned.

  He moved forward and aimed at the man’s back. “Just keep a safe distance; he’s gone mad.”

  We followed him, keeping several yards behind. He waddled along a path, whispering unrecognizable gobbledygook, past a couple of Victorian houses, and turned into a driveway, all the while holding the knife and shaking it as if he had two dice in his hands. I detected a faint smell of alcohol.

  “Here, here,” he said, pointing at an open garage.

  The bloated body of a middle-aged woman lay on the concrete floor, surrounded by a purple stain. Her throat had been slit, and she had slash wounds on her exposed arms.

  The man stepped toward me and tilted his head. “That’s her—that’s my wife. He made me do it—it was him.”

  I edged back. “Stop right where you are.”

  “Who made you do it?” Jack said.

  The man stared into space. “The voice: kill one, kill one, kill one, kill one, kill—”

  I turned to Brett. “He’s still activated. We need to get out of here.”

  “I don’t think so, mate. He might have heard it from someone else.”

  “Are you sure?” Jack asked. “I don’t like the way he can’t control the knife.”

  I wasn’t convinced either. He rambled like a madman. What else could it be?

  “I killed her?” the man asked.

  The stains on his clothing suggested he’d killed something. As he’d led us to the body, it seemed reasonable to assume that he’d killed his wife. I looked over my sights, into his eyes. “Probably, but it’s not your fault. We know—”

  He shook the knife even more violently and stooped over the blade. The point missed his eye by a whisker. “Me? I did it?”

  “Calm down for minute,” Jack said. “There’s been some crazy shit happening.”

  The man maniacally smiled through gritted teeth. His jerks became increasingly frantic. “Thank you.”

  “Wait!” Brett said.

  He thrust the knife straight underneath his own chin. His eyes bulged and he sank to his knees, gargling and coughing blood down the front of his shirt.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said and ran over to him. He let go of the knife and fell to his side.

  I went to pull it out but realized it was too late. His eyes fluttered shut, and blood pooled around his head. He let out two wet croaks before his whole body relaxed.

  Brett stared, open-mouthed. Jack gazed down with a look of disbelief. “What the fuck?”

  I took a couple of steps back to avoid the growing claret pool and tried to rationalize the man’s actions. “Remember the guy at the airport needing to confirm a kill? Maybe he thought the voice killed and not him.”

  “God knows,” Jack said. “He’s just another poor bastard who died by the handiwork of Genesis Alliance.”

  “It’s not possible,” Brett said. “I heard there were problems, but nothing like this. The instructions are quite specific.”

  “How about you tell us the problems?” I said. “Because at the moment, everything we thought we figured out has gone to shit.”

  Brett moved away from the drive and stood in the shade on the front lawn. “It was more to do with people not getting activated who were near machinery, or recovering quicker than expected. There’s so many parameters to the system, but the message is quite specific.”

  “Did you program the message?” I said.

  “No, I didn’t. I worked on inter-device communication and statistics. My side is all commercially available coding. Do you know what they told me it was originally for?”

  I slung my rifle and folded my arms. “Try me.”

  He sighed and leaned against the window ledge. “Marketing. They claimed they would take money from corporations by implanting their products into people’s consciences.”

  I generally didn’t believe in conspiracy theories like the moon landings being fake or Elvis still being alive, but I might have been curious about this one. Regardless, I wouldn’t have suspected the ultimate aim of the technology.

  “How does it work?” Jack said.

  “I’ve told you before, I don’t know. I worked on building the inter-device communications, like mobile switching centers in a cell network.”

  I suspected he was being evasive and stepped toward him. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to steal the patent. Are you saying there’s been no reports of it sending people around the bend?”

  He bowed his head. “I heard talk of it but saw nothing in the official reports. Would you question it with your family under threat?”

  “Brett, if there’s anything you’re hiding, now’s the time to say,” Jack said.

  “What do you want to know? The program I developed for monitoring the top ten processes? The statistical reports I created for gathering location updates and memory usage? The signaling protocols and their configurations? You shouldn’t overestimate my role. There’s nothing I can do to help these poor people.”

  His last words were heartfelt, although he confused me with his technobabble, which wasn’t that hard to do. I reminded myself about his previous openness and the duress that he’d been under, long before the first activation even happened. Perhaps the system had quirks that he didn’t know about.

  “Forget about it,” I said. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk things through once we complete our mission.”

  Jack jerked his rifle to the other side of the road. “Let’s raid that house and get out of here.”

  I followed him and wondered how we could tell if anyone on the ground could be trusted. Brett trudged alongside me. “I’m here to help you and survive. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s as simple as that.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “You can’t blame us for asking questions.”

  Jack kicked the door open, leaned against the front entrance, and spun into the light-pink hallway. He glanced back and pressed his finger against his lips. I stepped through the entrance and squatted on the sea grass carpet. A creaking sound came from behind a door, probably the living area.

  I aimed over around Jack’s side. He thrust the door open with the bottom of his boot and sprang into the room. I immediately followed and swept the area.

  A lady, around eighty years old, hung from a beam on the roof. A toppled stool lay beneath her. I looked at her face and immediately turned away. To her right, by an old-fashioned three-bar electric fire, a man of similar age sat in a wheelchair. A knife handle poked out of his chest, and his head rested on the back of the chair, mouth wide open as if he died while screaming.

  “Everything all right in there?” Brett called from the hall.

  I sighed and peered beyond the couple at a rotting buffet on a wooden coffee table. “Let’s find the bathroom and get scrubbed up.”

  Upstairs, the plumbing in the bathroom still worked and supplied us with cold water. I didn’t trust it to drink, unless we found some purification tablets. Jack, Brett, and I took turns stripping off our shirts and cleaning ourselves, using a bar of fragrant soap and a pink sponge from the shower cubicle. I dabbed my stinging arm wound that I’d incurred at the tangle of cars and noticed it becoming increasingly bright red around the edges.

  Jack tossed me a small bottle of antibacterial ointment and a bandage from the mirrored cupboard above the sink. “You’ll be needing these.”

  I treated my arm and spotted a disposable razor on the window ledge. “You gonna have a shave?”

  “What’s the point?” he said and hummed the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In” while putting his sweater back on and slinging his rifle.

  I grabbed a fresh towel from a rack and dried myself. It felt like Jack and I had at last clicked back into gear and were starting to do things automatically. We didn’t debate this house clearance—we just did it. I’d feared for his mental health over the last week; it had crumbled on our way to Monroe, causing him to behave erratically. Our new focus and clear mission seemed to be having a positive effect.