by Drew Brown
“On the living?”
“On the living, on the dead—anything, William, except each other. This stage will continue up until around twenty-four hours, although the change is more gradual than that, when almost full control of the body will be achieved. The subjects have by this point regained all of their physical strength and dexterity, but their mind is still blank. They are like animals, driven by hunger. They hunt in packs and are extremely dangerous, despite their lack of intelligence.”
“So, this is the stage we’re at now? I mean, that’s what’s been chasing us, right?”
“So far, William, so far, yes, that seems to be the limit of their development. Although, that will change: for some, it already has. Between thirty-six and forty-eight hours in, the subjects become self-aware.”
“ ‘Self-aware?’ ”
I was repeating what he was saying so much that I started to feel like a damn parrot…
“They regain the ability to think, to plan, to orchestrate traps and avoid danger; they cease to act like thoughtless animals and attempt to couple their own survival instincts with their need to feed. In short, William, they become like primitive humans, learning as they go.”
“You’re saying they’re still human?”
“No,” Deacon said as a pained expression crossed his face. “No, William, they certainly are not human. The disease, infection, virus, whatever the scientists chose to call it, arrived on the comet. They are alien.”
Budd raised his eyebrows, casting Deacon a curious expression, which turned into a smile a moment later. He stood up from his stool. “You had me going there for a while, whoever you are. Diseases, infections, radiation, and strange clouds I can almost believe, but not aliens. You took it a step too far. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be with Juliette.”
Deacon lifted his right hand, holding out his palm. “Please don’t get me wrong, William. These are not little green men with flying saucers and laser beams. This is a life-form from another world, vastly different from our own, and it exists on a cellular level; it cannot be seen, it merely infects other living organisms, taking over their flesh and bones, bending them to its will.”
“I’m not convinced, buddy.”
“When the infected that are roaming these lands enter the fourth stage, normally between sixty and seventy hours in—during the third day—they will have abilities against which the human race cannot defend itself. They can communicate over immeasurable distances; what one sees, the others know. These are not aliens, William, but a single entity; a virus-like net that absorbs everything caught inside it. The people and animals that it infects die, only for their bodies to continue. They are like ants in a colony, collectively gaining knowledge and multiplying in numbers. There is no stopping it, and it will grow until it has consumed every living being on this planet.”
Budd bent over and placed his hands on the desk. He let his face show his frustration. “Right, buddy, let’s wind it up, ’cause I’ve had just about enough of this crap. So what? Who cares what you say will happen in the future, who cares that some comet will crash into the planet and bring some terrible space-mutant infection with it? You said it happens years from now so, the question is, why am I having such a bad day today?”
“This is not the same thing, Mister Ashby. This is much worse. And it is partly my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“Yes, I am somewhat responsible—not intentionally, you must understand—but I have to shoulder much of the blame. Shall I finish my tale? Will you take your seat again?”
With a sigh of reluctance, Budd returned to the stool. He sat down and folded his arms over his chest. “Go on.”
“After the infection began to spread outside China, panic gripped the world. To protect themselves, countries took up their arms, using missiles, air strikes and even nuclear attack. All the major population centers in the Republic of China were levelled to the ground, and so were other towns and cities in nearby countries; but no matter how brutal mankind was, the spread of the infection would not cease.
“Gradually, it moved out further; the Middle East, Africa, mainland Europe, and both the North and South of America reported limited outbreaks. But they did not remain limited for long; all in all, it took less than a year for mankind to change from being the dominant species on the planet into one that was being chased to the edge of extinction. Britain harbored one of the last safe areas in the industrialized world. Protected from our infected European neighbors by the Channel, and the fact that civilization had broken down to the point that no more planes could fly and ships were blown out of the water on sight, Britain managed to co-ordinate a limited type of resistance. Truly, we thought we were safe; but one day, out of the blue, reports of the infection spreading through some of the southern coastal towns brought us to realize the worst. We were doomed.”
“Why couldn’t you just give everyone a dose of the cure you gave Juliette?”
“What was left of the British population had been vaccinated against the airborne strain of the virus, but nothing we could manufacture prevented infection via blood or body-fluid transfer. The cure I used can fight it off, but it has to be administered close to when a person becomes infected. It does not provide long-term protection. And how could we possibly use it soon enough when the whole of the country was a war zone? Besides, we could not produce that sort of quantity, even if we wanted to.”
“You said the fog contains the virus-thingy. So why are the survivors from the hotel still alive? Last time I checked, I was still breathing, too.”
“Will you let me continue? The answer to your questions will come.”
“Shoot, then. But I still don’t see how all this is connected.”
“What was left of the government passed a law enabling the use of a secret technology, one that had been in development for more than seventy-five years, but which had never been used for fear of its potential consequences.”
“What technology?”
Deacon smiled. “Time travel, William, the government finally allowed us to travel in time.”
“That’s impossible,” Budd replied.
“No, it is not impossible; in fact, it’s much simpler than we had at first imagined. Look at my face, you know what I am saying to be true: I am the first person in history to deliberately travel through time.”
“Hokum.”
“Do you remember why you brought me to London?”
“You had a meeting with an accountant. Something very important, well, that’s what Deacon—you—said then, anyway.”
“The fundamentals of time travel were discovered by accident, during the Second World War, a by-product of American scientists researching something else entirely. It was called the Philadelphia Experiment.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Budd said. “Weren’t they trying to make a ship invisible?”
“Not exactly. They were attempting teleportation. They were trying to move the ship from one place to another instantly, but they failed. Instead they sent it back in time nearly two hundred years.”
“I’ll say it again. Hokum.”
“Regardless of your opinion, the governments of the world, well, the ones who were told of the secret, believed it enough to start taking precautions. Isolated containment chambers—one in Alaska, one buried deep beneath London, and one on Hope Island, a small, American-purchased rock in the Arctic Circle—were set up to carry out the research needed to start making time travel something that could be controlled and utilized. To coordinate the efforts, an umbrella company, TimeTech Solutions, was established, owned jointly by the United States and British governments. Due to the dangers involved in such a study, the project was named ‘Last Hope.’ It was ruled the technology would only be used if mankind were ever on the verge of extinction; when an emissary from the future would be sent back to warn of whatever danger was approaching.”
“I’m sorry, fella,” Budd said, shaking his head slowly, his frustration sliding again
into dark humor, “but if someone walks off the street claiming to be from the future, everyone’s just gonna think he’s a nut. Let’s face it, that’s what I think ’bout you.”
“Obviously, William, and that is part of the reason the three containment sites were built. There was one at each base. They were designed to receive someone from the future; our studies concluded that the travelling person would reappear in the exact same place as they’d been sent from, and so, long before we actually began work on the machines themselves, the containment sites were established.
“They were built to be entirely sealed, with an air production plant and food and water, so that should the emissary from the future be carrying any disease that the receiving time was not capable of defending itself against, there would be no danger of the infection spreading. That is why I came to London; the cost of running these sites was huge, they were great users of electricity, and so an accountant, in his wisdom, had decided to limit their use to a single day every week.
“The whole affair was partly my fault, for I had theorized that by altering the amount of power applied, we could very accurately select which date and time the emissary would return to. The accountant took this idea, arguing that as long as the records concerning when the containment areas were running were kept safely, people in the future would be able to pick the right days to arrive. London and Alaska had already implemented his proposal; I came here to fight for the right to keep Hope Island running permanently. I lost.”
“Accountants, hey? They’ve never done me any favors, either.”
“When the British government brought Last Hope into operation, the decision was not made lightly. No one was sure what would happen to the receiving time; the sending time didn’t matter; we were implementing it because we were beyond the point of no return. Despite the fact that we were outside the realms of our knowledge, the decision was taken that it was worth the risk; the national power grid was extremely shaky and variable in its output: there was no telling exactly when I would be sent back to. But then, even if my arrival caused the end of the world to the receiving time, their days were already numbered. At my urging, the Government decided that it was worth the risk to send me back as far as I could come; using all the available power, so that there would be enough time to build a weapon that could deflect the comet away from Earth. There was no denying the gamble but, feasibly, there was every chance humanity could be saved.”
Budd looked at Deacon’s face, thinking for a moment that he could see tears in the scientist’s eyes. “I take it, by the way things look outside, you bet on red and it came up black.”
“Indeed, William, things have not gone as I’d hoped. We used all of the available power, but because of its fluctuations, we could not be certain of which day I would arrive. As you can probably guess, the containment field was not in operation yesterday, and, as we had feared, the inner chamber was not strong enough to withstand the activity. My arrival sent an electromagnetic shockwave around the globe, and I fear that the infection’s mildest form carried on the back of the disturbance.”
“Hey, now you’re talking ’bout stuff I understand- and you’re way off target. I was there when we dropped the E-bomb on Baghdad; there wasn’t a toaster working for miles around. But an electromagnetic shockwave can’t ever go around the planet. They can only make it as far as the visual horizon from the burst point. Even at three hundred miles above Kansas, you’d only take out North America. The pulse can’t take bends, buddy, so there’s no way the whole world could get banged up. What height was your supposed time-machine?”
“Below ground.”
“Ha, you jack-ass, I knew if I listened to you long enough I’d catch you out. An E-bomb detonated below ground is ’bout as much use as a bikini in the Arctic. You’re talkin’ crap.”
“You are correct in your rather basic knowledge of EMP devices, Mister Ashby. But do not doubt what I say. The chamber I arrived in became filled with air from my time; air that was permuted by the virus. Air that was, itself, alive.”
“Oh, come on, what kind of B.S. are you feeding me? Is the swelling on my head so big that I look like a mushroom?”
“Have you not witnessed the fog moving against the wind?”
Well, he had a point with that. Up on the New Millennium Hotel’s roof, I’d seen the wind and the fog playing absolutely no attention to each other. But, come on, living air? I’m sure you wouldn’t buy it either…
“Maybe, but it could’ve just been a freak gust. And, even if I did, it doesn’t explain how an electromagnetic pulse can defy the laws of physics.”
“The infection changes the molecular form of the air around us. The structure of its cells is different; they are shaped like a prism. The EMP reflects from these, enabling it to continue moving, while all the time carrying the virus further. The entire process is self-perpetuating.”
“You’re clutching at straws now, pal.”
“All of this was identified in our research, but we calculated that the containment field would be powerful enough to halt it. Sadly, as you know, the field was switched off. Within a few minutes of my arrival at 1:00am yesterday morning, the entire world’s communication network was down, as was most of the power and any complicated electrical machinery. And, worst of all, the majority of the Earth’s population was infected with the mildest form of the virus.”
1:00am? Sadly, that rang a bell…
“Mildest form?”
“As we discussed, the virus can be contracted in two ways. Firstly, by breathing it in, which is why there are some survivors such as yourself: if the human body has high enough levels of adrenaline at the moment it is contaminated, then the subject is able to fight off the infection, leaving behind a partial immunity. The second method—and this is too powerful for the body to fight alone—is by having the bloodstream directly polluted with the body fluids of an infected subject, such as the transfer that takes place during a bite. The only way a subject can be saved after this is by the injection that you witnessed; but it has to be administered quickly, within fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“Hold on there, partner, you said the fog allowed the EMP to travel. But the fog didn’t appear until much later. I know, because I stood outside the hotel and watched it fall. Your story has more holes than the Vatican’s.”
“The fog had nothing to do with the spread of the EMP, you are right, it comes later, forming at high altitudes where the air is thinner before falling to the surface of the planet. But, William, the actual fog is a result of the change, and not the change itself. The air that came back with me started a reaction that spread throughout the world, intrinsically altering the very air we breathe, although invisibly at first. Anything not airtight will have been contaminated, and any human who breathes that air, unless their bodies happened to be producing high levels of adrenaline at the time, will be infected.”
“So, let me get this right, what you’re telling me is that by coming back in time to save us from an alien-carrying comet, you’ve ended the world a decade earlier than it would’ve been if you hadn’t meddled? For the record, I’d like to express my deepest gratitude for all of your efforts. Hooray for the wonder of science.”
“We did our best,” Deacon said with a shrug of his shoulders. “This outcome was one of many possibilities. The attempt was made with the best of intentions.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“It is not, William, I can assure you. But you are to me. You can help humanity survive.”
“Me?”
“Together, we can put right this mess.”
“Now, brother, I know you’re crazy.”
“The facility in London is without power; it ran on the National Grid and, as such, is now useless. Although I lost the argument to keep the containment field operational permanently on Hope Island, the changes didn’t come into effect for many weeks. My old team of scientists will be locked up inside, and they should be safe and secure from this infection.” Deacon pau
sed for a few seconds, but held up his left hand to stop Budd from interrupting him. He bent down beneath the desk and brought up another item.
It was Budd’s rucksack, which had been confiscated by Patterson, the blond-haired soldier, in the hotel lobby. As Deacon unzipped it and rummaged around inside, Budd said nothing. Eventually, the scientist pulled out a bundle of maps, folded up and rolled together, secured by two rubber bands.
“These are your flight plans, are they not?”
Budd nodded. The maps contained the routes he normally took when shuttling between TimeTech’s airfields. “Yeah, they are.”
“I could not have hoped to reach Hope Island in time, and even if I could find another pilot, I have no idea of its exact location. But if you can get me there, I can sort out this mess. Currently, the machine is almost ready; all it is lacking are the correct calculations. I know them by heart. We can use the machine to go further back, to send another emissary, and save humanity.”
Budd rubbed his face with his hands, trying to shake off the tiredness he felt. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You must think I’m crazy, spinning me such a yarn. This has got to be my worst nightmare ever.”
“While I agree that this is a nightmare, it is not yours alone.” Deacon returned the maps to the rucksack and zipped it back up. He also took out a handgun from the waistband of his trousers. He slid the two items across the desk. “Take them both, William. I need your help. You will provide me with it, will you not?”
“How do you know your scientist buddies are gonna be alive?”
“There is every chance, as the base has a double failsafe for the containment facility. One is built directly around our machine in the center of the laboratory, which is what consumes all the power and was turned off in London. Also, as a secondary precaution, the actual external walls of the facility are threaded with electromagnetic shielding. My colleagues inside this section should be safe. Here in London, the skin depth of the external shielding was not enough to stop the electromagnetic shockwave escaping, being so close to the source, but as far away as Hope Island is, I am sure the shielding will have been sufficient. Of course, even if it was not, it is of little consequence. Unlike London, the Hope Island facility has its own re-bootable power supply, and I can operate the machine alone if I need to. Will you help me?”