The Apocalypse Club

by McLay, Craig

  “Yuck,” Violet said.

  “What? Like the scene where they open the ark at the end of Raiders?” I asked.

  “No. Those ones melted. With C-Mechs, it comes off in chunks. It’ll be walking around and then – splat! – the left cheek just falls right off.”

  “Face or butt?” I asked.

  Max took another spoonful of stew. “Sometimes both. They make female ones, too. One time, I saw this chick with huge –”

  “I’d really like it if you didn’t finish that story,” Violet said.

  On the screen, Oren had found what looked like a beach towel and was waving it in the general direction of the C-Mech’s face. He was trying to wipe away the blood, which was still running out of the nose and splattering down on the techs, who were crawling everywhere like worker bees trying to get everything reconnected. The problem was that the source of the blood was still about seven feet from his outstretched arm.

  “I need a ladder!” Oren shouted. “I need a ladder to reach the mighty leader’s nose!”

  Nobody was paying any attention. Blood continued to rain down on Oren, who didn’t appear to be making any attempt to shield himself. One large droplet landed on the lens, obscuring most of the left side of the frame in a red haze.

  There was a click and a whirring noise.

  “Left hemisphere is online!” somebody shouted off camera.

  “Great and mighty leader!” Oren said. “I have – glurg!”

  We could just make out one of the arms swing into view as the camera swung violently up, pointing at what looked like the ceiling. It then began turning slowly counter-clockwise while somebody (Oren, presumably) began to make a horrible screeching sound.

  “I GED A DOO DIS WID MY OWN HADS, YOO PESDILED LIDDLE COGGSUGGER!”

  There was a crack and a wet ripping sound. Those of us watching covered our mouths in horror as the rest of the lens was obscured with red.

  “Oh dear,” Tristan said, looking like he was about to be sick.

  “I’m guessing that Oren is no longer the go-to guy at Firmamental anymore,” I said.

  “OWDA MY WAY, FUGWIDS!”

  There was a loud thunk as the microphone hit the ground and then the sound went dead.

  “That’s it,” Violet said.

  “So we know Hudson is in a C-Mech, even if it didn’t go one hundred per cent according to plan,” Max said.

  “When was this shot?” Tristan asked.

  “Yesterday,” Violet said. “Last night at eight-oh-four pm eastern standard time, to be precise.”

  “He’s probably on his way to the site now,” Max said. “If he isn’t there already.”

  “The storm actually gave us a bit of a push,” Violet said. “We’ll be there by tomorrow morning.”

  “I hope so,” Tristan said. “If he gets there first, then this could all be for nothing.”

  I glanced back at the final frame of the video and shuddered. Based on what we had just seen, I couldn’t envision any scenario where our early arrival would make the least bit of difference. Of course, there was still the matter of Ida and her team of glorified bounty hunters looking for us as well. Was it better to freeze to death on an ice floe, be sucked off the face of the earth by a tornado, crushed under a few million tonnes of ice, eaten by some sort of subterranean alien species, shot by a sexual predator, or torn in half by the psychotic 12-foot-tall half-robot, half-chief executive officer of the company where I used to work? They did, after all, appear to be the most likely options.

  “Think I’ll head topside and get some air,” I said, heading for the stairs. I figured I might as well absorb as much fresh stuff as I could while I still had the chance.

  -30-

  We arrived at the entrance to the Handleer Crevasse early the next morning, at which point we became aware of a minor impediment to the execution of our plan.

  Only, that is, if you can call 700 vertical feet of masonry concrete “minor.”

  “What the hell is that?” Max said.

  We were bobbing in the waves about 200 yards from the shoreline. It was foggy, but the rising sun was already starting to burn most of the mist off. In an hour or so, we would probably be in clear sunlight and our presence would be no mystery whatsoever to anyone who happened to glance oceanward from the shore.

  We could see the massive grey cliffs of Greenland’s west coast towering straight up out of the water. The problem was, the space where they parted to allow entry into the crevasse had been blocked by what looked like the largest dam I had ever seen in my life. It was so tall, in fact, that we couldn’t really see the top, which disappeared into the mist and was only visible for a few scattered moments when the wind blew a hole in the clouds.

  “That was not here the last time I visited this place,” Tristan said.

  “I’ve never been here before,” I said. “But I’m willing to take your word on that.”

  “Why would you build something like that?” Max said. “If you wanted to block the entrance to ships, you could have built a breakwater that was one hundred times smaller.”

  “I don’t think it’s there to block ships,” Violet said. “Well, not just for that reason, anyway.”

  I noticed what looked like large, circular black protrusions spaced evenly across the face of the dam. They made it look like some sort of giant game board. Like the dam itself, I had no idea as to their purpose.

  “Okay,” Max said. “Then why?”

  Violet looked at Max. “Why do you usually build a dam?”

  Max thought about it for a moment. “To hold back water?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But it’s not like Greenland is in danger of flooding, is it?”

  “I believe I understand your meaning,” Tristan said, clearly grasping the implication before Max did. “Not to dismiss it out of hand – because I believe it may prove to be extremely important – but our most pressing consideration at the moment is how to get on to the island.”

  “Right,” Violet said. “Well, there is a large shipping dock about a mile up the coast. That’s where they bring in all the shipbound cargo for the Weather Station. I was avoiding us going in that way because it’s also a GDI naval operations base. There’s no way we’d be able to sneak in there unseen.”

  “Well, I believe we are going to have to try,” Tristan said, eyeing the cliffs. “Unless, of course, the four of us would like to put our mountaineering skills to the test.”

  I gulped. Just the sight of the cliffs was enough to make my testicles want to retreat into my throat. The thought of trying to climb them was enough grounds for said organs to file for divorce. I had never climbed anything higher than the monkey bars behind my old elementary school, and even then, I was fifteen minutes late coming back from recess once because I had gotten to the top and was too scared to try getting back down.

  “I’m with Tristan,” I said. “Shipping dock sounds good.”

  “I still don’t get the dam,” Max said. “Why are they trying to keep water out?”

  “They’re not trying to keep it out,” Violet said. “They’re trying to keep it in.”

  “That will all become clear in time, I fear,” Tristan said. “In the meantime, I do not believe it is wise for us to linger here.”

  “Okay,” Violet said. “It may not be wise for us to go that way, either, but what the hell.”

  Violet disappeared into the pilot house. A moment later, the ship’s nose swung around and we were heading silently north. The wind and sun were burning off the last of the mist, allowing us a better look at the massive icebergs floating in the distance, some so big that they qualified as islands of their own.

  “Did it look like this the last time you were here?” I asked Tristan.

  “No,” he said. “The entire coastline was covered by the ice sheet. I remember the first time I set foot on it. A spot not so very far from where we are right now.”

  “Wouldn’t try it now,” Max observed. “Unless you can walk
on water, that is.”

  “Indeed,” Tristan said. “A lesson that I fear a great many people are going to be forced to learn the hard way if we are unsuccessful.”

  We came around a rocky outcrop and the docks came into view. Tristan and I instinctively ducked down behind the rail. I could see five long concrete docks sticking out from the shore like giant fingers. Three of them were relatively short (maybe 500 feet) and two looked long enough to berth an oil tanker. A rectangular harbour had been carved out of the cliffside, where I could see several dozen buildings. The GDI base was easily identifiable thanks to the fact that it was completely surrounded by a steel security fence with sentry towers at every corner. It was next to one of the longer docks, the entry to which was also barred.

  Max ran below and grabbed a pair of binoculars. Even without them, I could see there were no ships at anchor and no vehicles moving on shore.

  “Place looks deserted,” he said, sitting next to us and panning the binoculars slowly back and forth. “I can’t see any activity at all.”

  I squinted, trying to see any sign of movement. “There has to be. The big boss is coming to town. The place should be a hive of activity.”

  “Look for yourself,” Max said, passing me the binoculars.

  I took the binoculars and peered through them. The boat was bobbing up and down in the waves, which made everything I was looking at flail wildly. I had to get up off my knees and squat with my legs tucked under me in a decidedly uncomfortable position to offset the movement of the boat. It wasn’t perfect, but at least I could focus on an object for longer than half a second at a time. Sort of. I looked carefully at each one of the buildings. I could see no vehicles, no lights, no people, nothing. Max appeared to be correct. The place looked like a ghost town.

  “You’re right,” I said, handing back the binoculars. “Nothing.”

  “If it really is abandoned,” Max said, looking again. “It was recently. None of the buildings or anything appears to be in disrepair. No smashed windows or overgrowth or anything like that. Looks like everybody just went for lunch at the same time.”

  Violet joined us at the rail. “The sonar and radar advanced early warning systems are both turned off,” she said. “So is the sat tracking. As far as I can tell, nobody’s watching the store.”

  “That’s good,” Tristan said. “This will make it a great deal easier for us to make our way in unnoticed.”

  “That may be,” Violet said. “But I wouldn’t say it’s good. Truth is, I’d feel a lot more comfortable about it if the place was full of response teams that were armed to the teeth and doing everything in their power to find us.”

  “Me too,” said Max. “This is weird.”

  “You think this is a trap?” I asked.

  “Well, if it isn’t, I don’t know what one does look like,” Max said. “About the only thing they haven’t done is put an ‘open house’ sign on the front lawn.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “Is there another landing point we might try?”

  Tristan shook his head. “If memory serves, the next nearest access point from the sea is six hundred fifty miles or so to the north of our current position.”

  I looked at Violet. “Is that true?”

  She nodded.

  “Maybe they pulled everybody out because the boss was coming,” I suggested. “Maybe they’re all up at the Weather Station. Or maybe there was a reactor leak or something.”

  “Maybe,” Max said, unconvincingly.

  “So what do we do, then?” I asked. “Just bob around out here for a day or so and see if anything happens?”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t really an option at this point,” Tristan said. “We shall simply have to go ashore and face the music.”

  “Never understood that expression,” I said.

  “The popular theory posits that it refers to disgraced officers being drummed out of their regiments,” Tristan said. “But I like to believe that it references the position of the peasantry – so-called, of course – in the west galleries of English churches. You see –”

  “Let’s save that discussion for a time other than now,” Violet said.

  “Oh, right,” Tristan said. “Of course.”

  “I agree with Tristan,” Violet said. “We go ashore and take our chances. Can’t stay out here forever. Besides, I’m tired of being stuck on this tub.”

  Max chewed on his upper lip. I could tell he loved this – feeling like the battle-hardened commander plotting his career-defining invasion.

  “Okay, we go,” he said. “Violet, see if you can bring us in just to the south of dock number five there. It looks like the most remote spot and it’s furthest from the base. Might be fewer potential booby traps and what have you set up over there.”

  “Will do,” Violet said, disappearing back into the pilot house.

  “You two come with me,” Max said, motioning for us to follow him below deck. Tristan and I jogged after him to the supply lockers. Max pulled the first one open, rooted around for a moment, and then pulled out a GDI survival suit. He held it up next to me to check the fit and then tossed it into my arms.

  “Here,” he said. “It’s not a combat suit, so there’s no armour plating, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

  I held up the suit. It looked like something you might go snorkelling in. “Are you serious?”

  “It’ll keep you alive if we get stranded out there,” he said.

  “What about bullets?” I asked. “Would it stop one of those if they try to convert me from alive to dead?”

  Max laughed. “No. But it will repel any barracuda or piranha that may try to take a bite out of your ass.”

  “Those aren’t really uppermost in my mind at the moment.”

  “It will be if you fall into a crevasse.”

  “Barracuda? I doubt it. I’ll probably be thinking something like: ‘Oh hey, I didn’t know my legs could bend that way. That’s a nice thing to be looking at as I expire.’”

  “It’s a survival suit.”

  “Oh, good. So it’ll take me even longer to die, you mean?”

  “Just put on the damn suit.”

  Max found another, larger suit and tossed it to Tristan, who looked at it for a moment before putting it down.

  “Thank you, my boy, but I don’t believe I will be needing one of those,” he said. “I have already survived longer than I care to without benefit of such a thing. No matter what we may be walking into out there, I believe I would prefer to do it in the suit my father bought for me on the day of my graduation.”

  Max looked like he was going to protest – this was, after all, the first minor mutiny to his newfound sense of command authority – but decided against it.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “I kinda like what I’m wearing too.”

  “Shut up and put on the suit, numbnuts.”

  I muttered under my breath and started putting on the suit, feeling all the while like a kid getting dressed up for Halloween who is really much too old to be going out trick-or-treating. Max rummaged around and found a helmet, some gloves and boots. “These too.”

  I continued to mutter. Max went to one of the other cabinets and removed a nasty-looking automatic rifle and a small handgun. He checked both and then handed me the latter.

  “Why do you get the big one and I get the little dinky thing?” I protested.

  “Because if you shoot yourself with this,” he said, indicating the handgun. “You might not actually die. Well, at least, not right away.”

  He went to hand one of the handguns to Tristan, but this was also waved away.

  “Thanks all the same,” Tristan said, grabbing his backpack and pulling out the spear gun. “But I believe I will stick with the familiar on this point as well.”

  “What about Violet?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t need one,” Max said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Point of principle,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Huh?”

  “Why don’t you ask her yourself if we get out of this?”

  “Dammit, man! I’m an analyst, not an amphibious assault specialist.”

  “So put it in a memo,” Max said. “Let’s go.”

  We went back on deck just as the boat was sliding in next to the dock. The fog had almost completely cleared and I could see the size of the port operation. Up close, its emptiness was somehow even more eerie than it was from far away. I tried to find a holster to tuck the handgun into, but my suit didn’t appear to have one. I settled for holding it with the barrel pointed straight up into the air. This served a dual purpose: it made me look (except for the helmet, which didn’t really fit, and the suit, which fit a little too snugly) cool by giving the impression that I did this all the time and therefore knew what I was doing (the rocking of the boat did a decent job of disguising my trembling knees); and would reduce my chances of killing anyone by accident in the event the damn thing went off unexpectedly.

  We crouched on the deck and watched as the dock got closer. Even though I couldn’t see any sign of a living soul, my heart was thumping strongly enough to make my vision blur. I hoped that I didn’t pass out. I had never passed out before, but I knew a kid in high school who used to do it all the time on account of low blood pressure. He got excused from gym because he might lose consciousness in the middle of trying to catch a baseball or complete a running long jump. He wasn’t allowed to drive a car, either. His parents had to take him everywhere, poor bastard. Can’t remember his name, though. Garnett something. He fell asleep writing an Ancient Civilizations exam once. We joked that it was because he had gotten a boner staring at the way Lisa Queenan’s thong underwear strap stuck up out of the back of her jeans and his brain couldn’t cope with the sudden diversion of all that blood. This resulted in his being given the nickname of “Sad Boner,” which unfortunately stuck with him for the rest of his high school tenure.

  “Mark! Pay attention!”

  “Sorry,” I said, snapping back into the present. Why was I thinking about high school? Was my life starting to flash before my eyes? Was I about to die? “For some reason, I got thinking about Sad Boner.”