by Greg Krojac
Of course, just like any other leader drunk on his own power, he would never admit to this publicly. It was difficult enough to admit to himself. He needed to vent his anger and frustration in such a way that it would send a message to all those who might oppose him. The resistance needed to know that a heavy price would be paid for this most recent act. His response would have to be unambiguous and brutal. And his response would have to start now.
The surviving eighteen security staff had been summoned to the front of the damaged building and were standing in two nervous rows before him. Marcus waved his hand in the direction of the damaged building.
“Would somebody care to tell me what the hell happened here?”
Nobody offered a response. Marcus asked again.
“What the hell happened here? I want to know.”
Again nobody offered an explanation. They knew that there was no response that would have satisfied Marcus, so the security staff thought it better to say nothing at all, rather than anger him even more.
Marcus didn’t have the patience for this. He pointed at one of the security officers, a balding, slightly overweight Latino man who, like everybody else, had been trying to remain anonymous. The man was caught unawares. He followed orders, that’s all. He wasn’t a decision-maker. Why had the Pindar singled him out? Surely it would have been better for him to question his superior? The man was the monkey, not the organ-grinder.
“You. What’s your name?”
“Carlos Rocha, sir.”
“Well, Carlos Rocha. Perhaps you would like to explain to me how a rag-tag bunch of resistance fighters were able to enter the building unseen? Not just resistance fighters but a bunch of bloody kids?”
“I don’t know sir. The cameras didn’t pick them up and the automatic pulse-guns were somehow disabled.”
“How were they disabled? Did somebody unplug them?
“I don’t think so, sir. I think an EMP knocked out the electrical systems.”
“EMP? I thought we’d resolved that problem.”
Carlos Rocha wanted to say ‘apparently not’ but knew that that would be a really stupid thing to do.
Marcus continued his interrogation.
“And why were so many of the security staff away from the facility?”
“I believe a stronger security presence was deemed unnecessary, seeing as we have state-of-the-art Pulse technology.”
“And just who deemed it unnecessary to keep a decent force available at all times?”
“I suppose that would be Captain Stewart, Sir.”
“Captain Stewart. Please raise your hand.”
An overly tall man with a bulbous ginger moustache that over compensated for his receding hairline half-heartedly raised his hand. Marcus marched briskly over to him, took his pulse pistol from its holster, set it to kill, and pushed it against the now terrified man’s forehead.
Captain Stewart started to shake. Marcus pulled the trigger and the captain fell to the ground in a crumpled heap.
The post-mortem of the events of the early hours was interrupted by the loud whooshing sound of a dozen military trucks pulling into the yard. In contrast to the peaked caps and side-arms worn by the security staff, the new arrivals – about one hundred and fifty of them - were dressed in battleship grey uniforms, storm-trooper helmets and gas-masks, grenades strapped to their belts and carrying the latest TA (Tag Assault) rifles.
Marcus addressed the anxious security staff for what would be the last time.
“Your services are no longer required. Your services have been terminated.”
As Marcus uttered the word terminated, he stepped away from the group of men and two dozen TA rifles were primed. Two dozen triggers were pulled and two dozen miniscule RFID tags were invisibly attached to the uniforms of the recently fired security staff, who sighed with relief having expected to have been shot and were surprised to find that they were still breathing. They had merely lost their jobs; not a good situation to be in but surely better than meeting the same fate as Captain Stewart.
Marcus returned to his position in front of them and shouted right in their faces.
“Run!”
Nobody moved.
“Are you fucking deaf? Run!”
The group of former ONP employees looked around at each other, wondering if they should do as they had been ordered. A petite, pretty woman of around twenty-eight years suddenly darted away from the main group and sprinted for the woods. Marcus nodded to one of the Defenders who shot his TA rifle into the air. The bullet arced, unseen, in the air and followed the path that the woman had taken. Within a second it had caught up with her, drilling its way into her back and exploding inside her ribcage.
Three more figures made a dash for freedom and three more shots were fired into the air. Two of the runners headed for the woods and one ran back into the building. The two who had taken the same escape route as the dead woman suffered the same fate, the last thing they ever saw being the cover of the woodland as they felt the pain of the bullets’ entry into their backs and the subsequent shattering of their ribcages and internal organs.
In a blind panic, the third would-be escapee locked himself inside a room in the main building. Surely he must be safe there; the bullet wouldn’t be able to pass through walls.
But the bullet didn’t need to. It simply followed the path of the wall of the corridor, seeking an air vent. Once found, the bullet worked its way around the maze of tubes, guided by the RFID tag embedded in the man’s clothing. No matter how long it took to find its target it would do so. The only thing that could deter it was if it was disarmed by the Defender who fired the shot.
The runner sat against the far wall of his refuge, breathing heavily, wondering if he should perhaps get out of the room and make a run for it. But, if he did so, he knew that it would only be postponing the inevitable. Whilst he sat there, procrastinating, the bullet emerged from the air vent above his head, made a 180 degree turn, and buried itself in his stomach, ripping apart his internal organs. If only he had known to get rid of his clothing he may have survived.
The remainder of the group remained still. They had seen how futile it was to try to escape from this situation and, one by one closed their eyes resigning themselves to their fate. Marcus gestured to the owners of the twenty rifles that had not, as yet, fired bullets and the troops decommissioned the tags, which unhooked themselves from the clothing of their targets and dropped to the ground. Marcus barked at the group before him.
“Listen up. You have been fired from your jobs but you are alive. I’m not a monster. You may get another job. You may not. I don’t care either way, but any future job will not be with the ONP or any of its affiliates. You will leave here with your lives intact but your reputations in tatters. I’m sure you will never forget what you have seen. Indeed, I encourage you to tell others what happened here. You must tell your families and your friends. You must make anybody you know understand the peril of crossing or displeasing me. You must encourage them to tell others. You will fear me but you will know that I can also be merciful. You are all the living proof of that. Now go!”
The fourteen survivors of this demonstration of power and force made their way into the woodland, still expecting a bullet in the back at any time. But none came. They were much more useful alive, spreading their eye-witness accounts of what had just happened, rather than being just another corpse on the ground, waiting to be retrieved and taken to the nearest incinerator.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
09:42 Tuesday 29 October 2069
At 09:30, all over the country, school gates were being approached by units of Defenders whilst the nation’s children were in school sitting at their desks having their first lesson of the day. This was the beginning of a massive national operation entailing the use of thousands of the menacingly clad elite troops and had the dual objectives of both sifting out the culprits and sending a chilling message to anyone who might be thinking of joining the resistance. Two Defend
ers, with orders to shoot to kill, were posted at all the entrances, trapping everybody inside each school.
At Downton Primary School on the outskirts of London, children’s noses were pressed against classroom windows just as they had been for centuries when something more interesting than the lesson was happening outside. What were these strange masked men in uniforms doing outside? Why did they have guns? At first, the children were simply interested, as normally the playground was empty at this time of the morning except for a few pigeons gathering scraps of food that had been spilled the day before. But when they saw a group of eight soldiers entering the school building even they knew that something was wrong.
Miss Troughton’s class drew their breath in unison as two of the scary-looking soldiers came into their room. The children were ordered to go to the assembly hall immediately, an order that Miss Troughton didn’t want to obey but she knew better to refuse an order from members of the ONP Defender Force, particularly such well-armed ones. She clapped her hands.
“Children, we’re going to go to the assembly hall now. Everybody leave quietly and calmly. I’m sure we’ll all be back here before you know it.”
Miss Troughton’s class filed out of the classroom to the assembly hall, where all the children at the school were gathering. A Defender ordered the teachers to separate any children who were under eight years old and older than twelve. These children were sent back to their classrooms.
On the school stage were two men in white coats, sitting behind a table with an unusual piece of equipment upon it. In a scene which was being duplicated nationwide, the children were brought up to the stage one-by-one to be examined by the ONP doctors.
Peter Simmonds was one of those children.
He looked at Miss Troughton who nodded that he should do as he was being told. As he walked up the three steps to the stage, he felt the same foreboding that he had experienced when arrested by Spanish troops during the Spanish Inquisition. His past lives had been mainly drama free, which is why it was so easy to remember that particular time of his lives. He had no idea what was happening to him, but he could sense in his bones that it would not end well for him. One of the doctors beckoned for him to sit down opposite him, which he did. The doctor had a very serious face and a very big nose, which Peter found it difficult not to stare at.
“Your name is Peter Simmonds?”
“Yes.”
“What is your date of birth?”
“29th October 2059”
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
“That makes you ten years old.”
“Yes.”
“Look into the eye pieces of this machine.”
Peter did as he was told and a beam of purple light shot into his pupils. The light flickered for a second and then rebounded red. Peter wondered what this was supposed to mean.
“Is red good?”
“No Peter, Red is bad.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means you’re a Recarn.”
The doctor called a Defender over who escorted Peter out to the playground, with much more force than was strictly necessary. Peter was a ten year old boy and hardly a match for the jackbooted Defender.
Inside the assembly hall five more Recarns, two eight year-old boys, a nine year-old girl, and two more ten year olds, a boy and girl, were identified. The rest of the children were sent back to their classrooms, the purple light beamed into their eyes having rebounded green.
In Miss Troughton’s class, the children were about to resume their vigil at the window when the windows turned opaque. Miss Troughton had pressed a button under her desk to prevent the children from seeing whatever would happen next. She had no idea herself what was about to happen in the playground but she was certain that it wasn’t anything that a child should see.
Outside in the playground, the six youngsters were lined up. A Defender officer drew his pulse-pistol and set it to kill. One by one the children were shot in the back of the head and then placed carelessly in a heap near the school gate. Two minutes later, a refuse truck pulled up by the school gates. It positioned itself in front of the small pile of corpses and scooped the lifeless children into the bowels of the large container sitting behind the cab, before driving off to the next school to pick up more of its macabre cargo, leaving the children’s souls to drift away in search of their next hosts.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
14:32 Tuesday 29 October 2069
All over the country rumours were gathering pace about what was happening at the nation’s schools. A media blackout had been put in place by the government, but nothing can effectively stop communication by word of mouth. Tales of children being tested to find out whether or not they were Recarns, and subsequently executed, were being passed from neighbour to neighbour, from family to family and being met with incredulity and horror. Surely there must be some kind of mistake? What government would start killing children in such a way?
At 2.30pm an ONP staff car turned into Wilberforce Way and stopped by number ten. An administrator checked the details on his smartphone which had a database of children between the ages of eight and twelve who were absent from school earlier that morning when the purge of Recarn children had started. The passenger looked at his partner, alongside him in the back seat of the car.
“This is the house. Number ten Wilberforce Way. Mr David and Mrs Rachel Williams. Three children; Jonas aged three years, Natalie aged nine years, and Robert aged ten. Natalie was absent from school today. Robert was found not to be a Recarn and exonerated. We need to check Natalie Williams.”
The two Administrators and their Defender driver got out of the car and walked up the garden path. There was a biting wind but it didn’t bother them at all; their uniforms were controlled by micro-thermostats and their bodies were kept at the optimum temperature for efficiency. The driver knocked hard on the door.
“ONP Defender. Open the door.”
There was no response although there had definitely been the sound of music coming from inside the house when they approached the door; now there was silence.
“ONP Defender. Open the door or I will destroy the residence with you in it.”
The Williams family had heard the stories about what had happened at the nation’s schools and opened the door. They didn’t doubt that the Defender would destroy the house. The administrators and the trooper didn’t wait to be invited in, pushing past Rachel Williams and heading directly for the kitchen. One of the administrators sat down at the kitchen table and set up his RIA, his Recarn Identification Apparatus. The other Administrator confronted the parents.
“Where are your children?”
David Williams stood in front of his wife.
“Our children? We only have one child, Jonas here. We don’t have any others.”
“You have two others, Natalie and Robert. Don’t try to deny this. It’ll make things worse.”
The ONP officials knew that they had three children. There was no point in denying it.
“They’re at school.”
“Robert is at school, yes, but Natalie Williams was recorded as absent by her teacher.
David put his arm around his wife’s waist, squeezing it tightly.
“Is Robert alright?”
“Robert has been exonerated. We need to confirm Natalie’s status.”
Rachel bit her lip. The Defender pointed his weapon at three year old Jonas.
“I strongly advise you to tell us. We need to confirm your daughter’s status. If you do not tell us what we want to know, I will shoot the child.”
From what they had heard about the morning’s events, neither David nor Rachel believed that it was an idle threat. But the dilemma that faced them was unsurmountable. They loved all their children equally; they couldn’t be expected to choose between two of them. Of course, they knew that if one of the children were to die, the child would be reincarnated, and the child’s soul would continue to exist, but they would st
ill lose a child, a child never to be held, kissed, and loved again.
The Defender repeated his threat.
How can a parent be expected to choose between his or her own children? They had created both Jonas and Natalie. They had nurtured both children, they had seen their first steps, and they had witnessed their first words. They had seen Natalie develop into a wonderful and caring young girl and they were now starting to witness the emergence of Jonas’s personality.
The Defender counted.
“Three, two, one…”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t shoot him. Natalie is in the attic, inside a wooden crate. Covered with old books.”
The administrator glanced at the Defender, who duly went upstairs to search for the couple’s daughter. He returned a couple of minutes later, gripping the arm of a freckle-faced red-haired girl, whom he forced onto a chair opposite the second administrator who was ready with his Recarn Identification Apparatus.
“Natalie Williams. I want you to look into the eye pieces of this machine.”
“Will it hurt? I don’t want to do it if it hurts.”
“No. It doesn’t hurt. A coloured beam of light will enter your eye and rebound out again off your retina. You won’t feel a thing.”
Natalie did as she was told. The beam of light rebounded red. Natalie’s mother sensed that this was bad. When Natalie was seven years old, she had told Rachel about the headaches and the sensation that she had lived before.
The first administrator pulled Natalie roughly from her chair.
David moved to stop him but was hit on the forehead with the butt of the defender’s rifle and collapsed unconscious on the floor, a large bruise already beginning to form where he had been struck.