Mass Extinction Event (Book 8): Days 109 to 116

by Cross, Amy

  “Okay, what now?” I snap, turning to her.

  “I beg your pardon?” her voice replies from the darkness.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “I didn't say anything.”

  “No, but you were thinking something. What was it?”

  “I thought you wanted me to be quiet.”

  “I did! I mean, I do, but it doesn't work if I know you're watching me and thinking stuff!”

  “How do you know I was thinking anything?”

  “Because that's just what you're like!” I yell, before sighing and slumping back down against the wall. “The lock can't be cracked,” I say finally. “It has a double plate over the front section, which means we can't even try to pick it open. Without the key, we'd literally need dynamite to blow the damn thing apart.”

  “Good boy,” Carter replies. “Well observed. So let's not waste any more time.”

  “So then what?” I ask. “Are we supposed to just sit here and wait to see what Patterson decides to do with us?”

  “That wouldn't be my first choice, no,” she says. “I rather think that we need to be more inventive. Tell me, Thomas. When one finds that a door cannot be opened, what does one try next?”

  “The windows?” I suggest.

  “Hold your horses,” she replies, and then she steps into view and I see that her face is more rotten than ever. She's still smiling, though. “If the door won't be separated from its frame,” she continues, “then one moves on to the next logical option. One begins to determine whether the frame can be separated from the wall.”

  Elizabeth

  “Not much further now!” Natalie calls back to the rest of the makeshift army, as we make our way along another abandoned street. “We're almost at the barrier!”

  “And you're sure Bloom's going to have arranged to let us through?” I ask. “How do you know this isn't a trap?”

  I wait for a reply, but she simply smiles at me.

  For a moment, I walk alongside her in silence. I haven't told her that I overheard her during the night, but I can't stop thinking about the way she seemed to be hearing voices. I don't believe in stuff like that, of course, but she seemed so completely absorbed by her imaginary conversation and I can't deny that I'm starting to wonder whether there might be things that I don't understand. Is it possible that my mind is a little too closed to things that might help me?

  “So something weird happened to me the other day,” I say finally. “I felt kind of weak, and I collapsed. I think I must have passed out, because I had this crazy dream that I was on a table somewhere with loads of wires and tubes attached to me.”

  “A crazy dream, huh?” she replies, sounding a little amused. “I can sympathize.”

  “But it felt so real,” I continue. “I know this is going to sound totally insane, but do you think it's ever possible to...”

  My voice trails off as I realize just how insane I'm going to seem. I'm not even sure that I want to finish this sentence, but at the same time I figure I've come this far. Besides, if I say it all out loud, maybe that'll help me to realize that it's nonsense.

  “Do you think,” I continue cautiously, “that it's ever possible for someone to... dream something that hasn't happened yet?”

  “You mean, seeing the future?”

  “That's kind of what it felt like,” I tell her, lowering my voice so that nobody else behind us can hear me and think that I'm nuts. “I know dreams are just dreams, but this felt like something that might really be going to happen. I told you about the stuff that happened a few days ago, when I got infected. And there's so much about the human brain that we don't understand. So I'm sort of starting to wonder whether...”

  Again, my voice trails off.

  “No,” I say finally. “No, this is totally nuts. This is the stupidest thing I've ever said in my life.”

  “It's really not,” she replies. “You've said way more stupid stuff in the past.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don't have an answer for you,” she says. “All I can tell you is that over the past few weeks, my mind has been opened up to a whole lot of other possibilities. I told you about the voices, right? Three or four weeks ago, I'd have thought that anyone talking about voices would have to be a total lunatic. Yet now, here I am, and these voices seem so totally real. I can't pretend to have any answers about them, but I hear them. I was even talking to them last night. And they tell me stuff that turns out to be true, so I can't dismiss the out of hand. You're right, though. There's a lot we don't understand.”

  We walk on for a short while, and I don't really know what to say.

  “Maybe this craziness is pushing us on,” she adds finally. “You know, making us... get better at stuff, when the pressure's on?”

  “That doesn't make much sense,” I point out.

  “Neither does having dreams of the future,” she replies, “or hearing voices, but here we are.” She stops suddenly, ahead of an opening in an old and very badly-damaged wall. “And speaking of which... Here we are!”

  The others stop behind us, and I suddenly realize that this must be the crossing point that Bloom claims to have arranged. It looks innocuous enough, but I can't shake the feeling that this whole situation has to be some kind of trap. Bloom probably has his own reasons for wanting to lure us to this point. Maybe he just wants to have us ambushed, to get rid of us? Or maybe he's got some reason that's even crazier? I get the feeling that Bloom's constantly trying to juggle various factions, and I wouldn't put it past him to be maneuvering into position like pieces on a chess-board. I'll never trust that man.

  “So I guess I should go first,” Natalie says, sounding just a little concerned. Maybe she shares at least some of my doubts.

  She turns to the others. There are about thirty people with us now, with quite a few having failed to show up this morning for the journey. Maybe they were too scared. What's left is a fairly tatty looking army, with people holding makeshift weapons. Frankly, we look less like an army and more like some people who are going to protest about a bunch of trees getting cut down.

  “This is your last chance to turn back,” Natalie announces. “Beyond this point, we'll be back in the main part of the city. I can't pretend to know how it'll go through there, but I have a pretty good idea what'll happen if we just stick around in this part. We'll die. Of disease, or starvation, or thirst, or some other cause. But we'll die. At least if we go forward, we have a chance of life. But I understand the fear, and I won't look down on anyone who chooses not to come.”

  We wait, but everyone simply stares at her. There's no rousing cheer, no raising of defiant, clenched fists, but at least no-one turns around and runs. There's still a slightly funeral feel to proceedings, though, as if no-one actually expects us to succeed.

  “Okay, then,” Natalie says, turning and stepping toward the opening, “let's -”

  “How do we know there won't be soldiers?” someone calls out. “There are always soldiers guarding these spots.”

  “I've been promised that they won't be here today,” Natalie replies.

  “But they shoot people who try to pass through to the main part!”

  “I know, but they won't be here,” Natalie says, stopping in the opening and staring straight ahead. “If you hear gunfire, turn back. But I have faith. I've been told, by Charles Bloom and by higher voices than him, that we'll have safe passage, and that someone will meet us on the other side. And I have to believe that this is all true. I can't turn back now.”

  With that, she steps through and disappears around the next corner.

  I wait, terrified that I'll hear the sound of guns firing, but a moment later Natalie's hand reappears and she gestures for us all to follow.

  I hear a general sigh of relief from the others, as we all start to make our way through. There's lots of debris underfoot, and there are patches of what I think might be blood on the walls, but sure enough we get around the next corner and find ourselves in yet anothe
r street. This time, however, the sidewalks seem to have been at least partially tidied, and I realize that we've made it back through into the central enclave that Bloom has been running.

  He was telling the truth.

  This wasn't a trap.

  “We made it,” Natalie says with a smile, as the rest of our rag-tag army comes through the opening. “Someone's supposed to meet us and tell us where to go next.” She glances around. “I've got to admit, I wasn't completely confident. This was another test for the voices, and they passed with flying colors. It's getting harder and harder to dismiss them.”

  “I still don't trust Bloom,” I tell her.

  “I'm open-minded,” she replies, turning to me. “But taking a risk is better than accepting certain death, right?”

  “Sure,” I say, before turning as I hear footsteps hurrying this way, “although -”

  Suddenly I stop as I see Ringcroft, and he seems equally surprised to see me.

  “Are you the...” He pauses, looking around at the rest of our little group, and then he turns to me again. “When I was sent to meet you guys,” he says cautiously, “nobody told me that you'd be here, Elizabeth. Now I think I understand what's going on.”

  Thomas

  “Try harder.”

  “I am trying harder!” I gasp as I continue to pull on the slightly-loose brick next to the door-frame.

  “No, harder than that!”

  “I already am!”

  “You can't already be trying harder!” Carter hisses. “By the very definition of the work, you'd need to -”

  “Do you want to do it?” I snap, turning to her.

  I can just about see her face on the other side of the bars. I know it's unlikely, but I swear she seems to have rotted a little more in just the past hour or so. There's something sad about seeing her in this state. Something vaguely pathetic.

  “I can't reach through,” she says firmly, “or otherwise I would give it a go. And I'd probably do a better job, too!”

  “It's loose,” I continue, “but not enough to come out. And even if I did get it out, that doesn't mean the entire door would suddenly magically fall out of the wall.” I pause, trying to think of something else that we can try. “And you know that I'm right,” I add finally, “which means that you're down to the most desperate options.” I pause again as the horrible realization begins to sink in. “Which means that, for maybe the first time since I met you, you don't have some grand plan up your sleeve.”

  I wait, still hoping that she'll suddenly tell me that I'm wrong, that she actually does know how we're going to get out of this place. The resulting silence, however, is all the answer that I need.

  “I'll keep trying the brick,” I say finally, turning and getting back to work. “It's better than nothing.”

  Elizabeth

  “Bloom's planning a revolt,” Ringcroft explains as he leads us into a dark, seemingly abandoned building. “He wants to get rid of Patterson, but he knows he can't do it alone. He also knows that he needs a spark to ignite the battle. You guys are that spark.”

  “We are?” Natalie says, before glancing at me. “We might be more screwed than I'd realized.”

  Looking around, I can't help but feel that she's right. This place looks some some kind of abandoned store, but it's completely rundown and I don't quite see how any kind of 'revolution' is going to start here. It's easy for people like Bloom and Ringcroft to come up with a bunch of inspirational words and slogans, but we can't possibly hope to be successful against actual soldiers with actual guns. Standing here now, in the cold light of morning, this whole plan is starting to feel increasingly hopeless. Up until this point I was worried that it was a trap. I'm still worried about that, but I'm also worried that it might be something worse. It might be real, but doomed.

  “People just need to see that there's hope,” Ringcroft says, turning to us. “A spark doesn't burn anything down by itself, but it starts the fire that eventually becomes an inferno. People are ready to push Patterson off his pedestal, but they're scared. They need to see that they're not alone. That's why Bloom wants you guys to give it all a kick-start. Once you've done that, Patterson'll be increasingly isolated. The man rules by fear alone. That's all he's got.”

  “What does he want?” Natalie asks.

  “That's hard to say,” he replies. “He's seen so rarely these days, and people are starting to gossip about what might have happened to him. By all accounts he was a fairly reasonable man before, when he was simply leading an army. It's as if something changed, to turn him into a monster. There are all sorts of wild theories going around, but it's clear that he doesn't care about this city and there are lots of rumors that he's going to abandon ship and leave us to be engulfed by a swarm of zombies. Believe me, plenty of people are unhappy with the situation. That's why it'll only take the tiniest of sparks for everyone to rise up against him.”

  “And how are you involved in this?” I ask.

  “Bloom came to me,” he says. “Apparently he's been aware of me for a while, he's been watching the way that I try to help people. I guess a guy can't keep a low profile, even in a bombed-out place like this. Maybe he just figured that I'm one of the few people he can trust.”

  “I'm not sure that I trust him,” I reply.

  “And I get that,” he says, before hurrying to a table at the far end of the room and grabbing a box, which he brings back over to us, “but I listened to what Bloom had to say, and it actually started to make sense. The man has a knack for the theatrical, too. He wants us to start a revolution called the Red Badge Brigade, and he gave us these to wear.”

  Natalie and I both peer into the box, and we see several crude-looking red, circular badges.

  “Seriously?” we both say at the same time.

  “There's logic to it,” Ringcroft says, setting the box down and then taking out one of the badges and turning to Natalie. Without waiting, he starts pinning it to her shirt. “The badges are something for people to look up to. For them to aspire to. There are plenty, and people are going to start asking to wear them. That's how the revolution is going to grow. We don't have the firepower to confront Patterson's men, at least not initially, which is why we have to use the only other weapon that's available to us. That weapon is hope.”

  “Uh-huh,” Natalie mutters. “Even I'm not convinced, and I'm the nutter who hears voices.”

  “We thought we'd be given weapons,” one of the others says, watching from behind us as Ringcroft starts attaching a badge to my shirt.

  “There aren't enough of you,” Ringcroft replies. “Not yet. That'll change, but this initial spark of revolution has to be caused by something a little more subtle. A little more organic.”

  “This doesn't feel very organic,” I tell him. “It feels forced.”

  He finishes attaching my badge, before turning to the others.

  “Line up,” he says to them, “and I'll hand these out.”

  I glance at Natalie and see that she seems skeptical, but then I turn and find that the rest of our so-called army are responding to Ringcroft's suggestion. They're forming a line, and they're going up to him one by one and taking their badges.

  “Did your voices say anything about this part of the plan?” I whisper to Natalie.

  “Not exactly. But you know this dude, right?”

  “Sure. I trust him. I think. At least, I think he thinks he's doing the right thing. It's Bloom I have problems with.”

  “We have to stick with this plan for now,” she replies, keeping her voice low, “but keep an eye out for any chance of a double-cross. Something about this whole arrangement doesn't pass the sniff test.”

  “Is that what your voices are telling you?”

  “They can be a little vague sometimes,” she mutters. “Big surprise, huh?”

  “This is just the beginning,” Ringcroft explains as he sets the box down and comes over to join us. “One day, we'll look back on this moment and we'll realize that it all started with
a few red badges and a few brave souls. I know the whole thing might seem crazy, but everything has to start somewhere, right? And if we don't make a stand, Patterson will never be stopped.”

  “So what's the plan?” I ask.

  “Bloom is going to come later and speak to you,” he replies. “If he has a chance to get away, that is. Obviously he can't afford to make Patterson suspicious. But my understanding is that he wants you to make some kind of stand this evening, once it gets dark.”

  “Why wait that long?” Natalie asks.

  “Because it's easier for people to see a spark in the darkness,” he points out, not unreasonably. “He's got some grand plan that he's not sharing so far. I think he's paranoid that Patterson will find out that he's up to something. Bloom's taking some major risks by preparing for all of this, and he'll be executed if he's caught. If all of this goes according to plan, Charles Bloom is going to be seen as a hero.”

  I glance at Natalie, and I can see that she still shares my concerns.

  “You'll understand later,” Ringcroft continues. “He has something for you, Elizabeth. Something that I think will change your mind completely.”

  Thomas

  “This isn't going to work,” I whisper, kneeling in front of the door and staring at the brick that refused to come loose. “We've run out of options. We're just stuck here until Patterson feels like coming to haul us out.”

  I wait, but Carter doesn't say anything. She's been unusually quiet for the past few minutes, but I guess even she has finally run out of dumb things to say.

  “If he didn't want us for something,” I continue, “he'd have killed us by now. I think he's expecting me to come around and see his side of things. That's not going to happen, of course, but it's what he's aiming for. Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't quite get why he's keeping you alive. Is it just on the off-chance that you turn out to be useful?”