The Apocalypse Club

by McLay, Craig

  Max thought for a moment. “Garnett Jolikowski? Why in the hell are you thinking about Garnett Jolikowski?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Pardon me for asking,” said Tristan. “But how does one go about acquiring the name ‘Sad Boner’? Am I saying that correctly? I didn’t mishear you?”

  Max groaned. “Let’s try to focus, here. If anything happens out there, just try not to shoot one of us.”

  “That’s a bit rich coming from a guy who has shot me twice,” I said.

  “He does have a point,” Tristan said.

  “I may add to that tally if he doesn’t shut up,” Max grumbled.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, looking around. “Where’s Violet?”

  “She’s going to stay with the boat just in case we need to make a rapid getaway,” Max said.

  “What?” I said. “Who the hell decided that?”

  “She did,” Max said. “You know Violet. She’s inscrutable.”

  I stood up. “Inscrutable, my ass. I’ve gotta go talk to her.”

  Max grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back down. “She asked me to tell you that she’s not going anywhere. She said to tell Mark I promise I’ll see him again.”

  The boat bumped up against the side of the dock. Max nodded to me and then jumped over the side. I looked back at the pilot house, but it appeared to be empty. Violet must have gone back below deck when I wasn’t looking. What the hell was she doing? This was exactly like the last time we had gone after a Weather Station, when Max and I walked right into the middle of trouble while Violet stayed behind and avoided the whole mess. Were we being set up again? Had she been playing me the whole time? Not just for the last two days but the last ten years?

  “Come on!” Max yelled, waving for me to follow. Tristan had already scrambled up onto the dock and was well ahead of me, running like the gangly scarecrow he so closely resembled.

  “Fuck it,” I muttered, then jumped onto the dock after them. It was a concrete dock with ridged metal tracks running the entire length, presumably for the vehicles that were used to load and unload cargo from the various ships that came and went. Vehicles that were nowhere to be seen today. This dock was much smaller than the two loading docks nearest the base, both of which were almost wide and long enough to build a stadium on.

  We reached the point where the dock connected to the land and stopped in what I thought was a slightly ridiculous action hero crouch, with each of us pointing weapons in a slightly different direction. Like it or not, our storming of the beachhead was underway.

  “Which way?” I said, breathing hard not so much from exertion as sheer terror. I was so keyed up that I almost squeezed off a round on a gull that dropped a little too close overhead. The operation was barely ten seconds old and I had already turned into Patton, blasting away at unhittable objects in the sky.

  “Let’s head toward that gate,” Max said, pointing at a large steel access gate about 300 yards away between the base and the warehouses. “My guess is that the Weather Station is connected to the base. This part might be unguarded, but I’m sure it won’t be once we get through there.”

  “Okay,” I said. “After you, Commander.”

  Max jumped up and started running toward the gate. He only made it about ten steps before he appeared to trip over something and went sprawling out on the rocky ground, dropping his rifle in the process. I was about to help him up when something hit me in the crotch with surprising force. I made a small woofing sound as my legs folded under me and I hit the ground next to him. I rolled around for several seconds in extreme and familiar pain before I heard a most unusual sound.

  Laughter.

  I rolled in the direction of the sound and opened my eyes, which were watering profusely. A human head suddenly appeared about five feet off the ground that, as far as I could tell, was not in any way attached to a body. The features were blurry and it took my eyes a moment to clear so that I could see who or what I was looking at. Short dark hair. Long nose. Flinty green eyes.

  Ida.

  “You should have seen the look on your face!” she wheezed, hovering in the air. I was sure I was seeing things. Where the hell was the rest of her body? I had dropped my gun. I rolled around to try to find it and was surprised to see it rise up off the ground all by itself and point itself at me.

  “Like this?” she said, looking down at where her body was supposed to be but was not. “It’s Ghost Armour. Little more advanced than anything your buddy Private Pencildick there ever got to use.”

  I looked over at Max, who was being pulled to his feet by invisible hands like some demented marionette. The same thing was happening to Tristan. I could see his spear gun floating in the air next to him as well.

  “I knew you’d come here,” Ida said. “Where else you gonna go? All we had to do was shut everything down and wait.”

  Her face hadn’t changed much. The only difference I could see was a semicircular burn mark on her left cheek. I thought about asking how she got it, but decided against it.

  “Get him up.”

  I felt somebody grab me by the elbows and pull me up to my feet. It was a strange sensation.

  “So where’s your friend?” Ida asked leaning in close to my face. It was all I could do not to swipe at the air below her like a magician. Even this close I couldn’t see anything else.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about!” Max said. “It’s just us!”

  Ida ignored him. “Search the boat!” she barked.

  I heard running footsteps make their way down the dock and the boat bounce in the water as one or more of her invisible soldiers jumped aboard. I heard a click and an electronic hiss and suddenly Ida’s body was visible. She was wearing some sort of matte black suit covered in armour plates. I could see what looked like a knife strapped to one leg and a miniature assault rifle held on by what appeared to be nothing at all on her back. Magnets?

  One by one, the others became visible as well, although they were still wearing helmets, so we couldn’t see their faces. I could see six of them, although there could have been more who were still cloaked. There could have been hundreds of them, for all we knew. It’s very discombobulating to be surrounded by invisible people. It’s like being forced to attend a meeting while blindfolded. For all you know, you could be the only one in the room wearing clown shoes. It puts you at a distinct disadvantage.

  Three soldiers hopped off the boat and removed their helmets. All three of them were women. All with blonde brush cuts and identical faces. Triplets?

  “Empty,” they said in unison.

  Okay, I thought. They hadn’t found Violet, which meant she had to be hiding somewhere on board. Obviously there was some secret compartment that she knew about that they didn’t.

  “Great, aren’t they?” Ida said. “They were originally grown for the C-Mechs, but they didn’t fall apart, so they moved them into Ghost unit instead. Best soldiers you could ask for. They do exactly what I tell them to do and when. Nothing more or less.”

  “Should we tie it up?” the triplets asked, pointing to the boat.

  Ida shook her head. “They might have booby trapped it. Blow it.”

  The first one nodded, pulled something off her hip and walked to the boat.

  “No!” I yelled, lurching forward. The one holding my arms from behind was a lot stronger than me, however, and almost dislocated my elbow pulling me back.

  “You’re pretty attached to that boat,” Ida said. “Why is that? Pleasant ride, was it?”

  I ground my teeth together. What the hell was I supposed to do? If I told her that Violet was on board, Violet would be dead. If I didn’t, Violet would be dead.

  “It’s empty,” the first one said again. “We checked everything.”

  “Why are you talking?” Ida said. “I ordered you to blow it.”

  The first one dropped whatever she was holding into the boat and jogged away from it with the other two. A moment later, the grenade exploded, sendi
ng multiple fragmentary fireballs everywhere. The boat was engulfed in flames in seconds.

  “Good to see you again, Simms,” Ida said. “You’re just in time, too. The show’s just about to start.”

  -31-

  They weren’t kidding about the size of the Weather Station, but the Förssagen ice sheet was the big surprise once we got up top.

  The image I had of Greenland in my head before I arrived there was the same as everyone else’s, I suppose. I thought the name was a cruel joke played by Vikings to make people think it was an idyllic place of rolling hills and forests instead of a barren wasteland filled with nothing but ice, rocks and large cracks and holes into which one might fall into unexpectedly. I had no idea if polar bears lived there, but figured it was probably too inhospitable even for them. Although I couldn’t remember having seen a picture of the place, I had a surprisingly strong image of it in my head. Having grown up in a place where winter descended with horrible implacability for almost half the year, it wasn’t hard for me to envision a place that had nothing but winter.

  This was not that place.

  For starters, the ice sheet was gone, replaced by not so much a lake as an inland sea that stretched all the way to the horizon. Behind us was the cold, gray north Atlantic and in front was a glossy aquamarine expanse that any Caribbean resort would be proud to feature on their brochure. In the distance, I could just see four thin, curved mountains sticking up above the surface like the claws of a long-vanquished sea monster. Other than that, there was nothing.

  The Försaggen Weather Station towered up out of the sea, looking to me very much the way a drilling platform probably looks to a carpenter ant – which is to say absolutely fucking gargantuanly more huge than my tiny mind could comprehend. It looked like a city on concrete stilts. The Weather Station itself was only part of the facility. A huge office tower rose behind it with the letters “HIG” on the front.

  We were standing on a large circular platform that jutted out from the main station. Based on the fact that it had a large bull’s eye painted on it, I guessed it was some sort of helipad. We were on the edge of it, being watched by Ida and her group of Ghost soldiers, all of whom were now de-cloaked and waiting in a neat formation. I still couldn’t get past the fact that they were all identical. Any time more than one of them came into my field of vision, I would scan back and forth between them looking for any differences, but could find none. I finally stopped doing this when one of them caught me and advised that I stop before she ripped my eyeballs out of my head and stuffed them up my ass.

  On the raised platform behind us, about a thousand people were sitting in metal stands. From the way they were dressed, they looked like an even mix of office workers, GDI troops and maintenance staff. The excited buzz of conversation increased noticeably as we were marched out to the edge of the helipad.

  “This is quite a reception,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting it. Is there a buffet table somewhere? We haven’t really eaten in a while.”

  “I don’t think this is for us,” Tristan said.

  “Then who?”

  “Out there,” Max said, pointing.

  I looked out towards the mountains and saw a tiny dot in the sky. As it got larger, I could hear the rhythmic thrum of giant blades cutting through the air and saw another, smaller dot hanging below it. As it approached, two lines of GDI troops ran out from behind us to encircle the platform. Above us, the hum of conversation dropped to a whisper.

  “This is a nice, understated affair,” I observed. “Then again, all that money Firmamental saved by firing all of those employees had to go somewhere, I guess.”

  “What are you talking about?” Max asked.

  “It was one of Oren’s big talking points in meetings,” I said. “He liked to remind us that our only purpose in life was to provide value to the shareholders.”

  “Which he did, up to a point,” Tristan said.

  As the massive helicopter got closer, I could see that the dot hanging below it was Hudson’s C-Mech. It did a slow circuit of the station and then swooped in low to hover over the pad. The blast of wind from the dual rotors was enough to knock a couple of Ida’s Ghosts off their feet. Out on the edge of the pad, the GDI honour guard was forced to hold on to the railing to keep from being blown into the sea.

  The pilot didn’t appear to be having an easy time of it, either. Despite the lack of an apparent crosswind, Hudson’s C-Mech was swinging back and forth wildly over the target. One attempt to touch down sent the C-Mech crashing into three GDI troops who made the mistake of trying to steady it. One of them was crushed and the other two were knocked over the railing into the water. The others had apparently been briefed on what to do in the event this happened and all shifted a few steps to fill in the newly vacated spaces. I could see the C-Mech waving one of its arms and opening and closing its mouth, but the rotors were much too loud to make out what it was trying to say.

  The second attempt to touch down was more successful. The C-Mech managed to stay on its feet while four troops ran out to disconnect the lift cables. Once this was done, the helicopter lifted up again and circled around to land on another helipad on the other side of the station.

  The C-Mech waited until the blom-blom-blom of the rotors had faded before stepping forward to wave to the crowd, which applauded wildly.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!” it said. It appeared to have regained control over its volume and cleared out the blockage in its nose caused by the fall. “As you know, this is a historic day.”

  The crowd cheered as the C-Mech walked toward us. I could tell that it didn’t have full mobility yet. The left leg was dragging slightly and it had only used its right arm so far. Still, impaired or not, just the sight of the thing walking toward me was enough to make me want to wet my pants and run in the other direction, especially in light of what it had done to Oren.

  “Good to see you again, old friend,” it said to Tristan. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  “Neither have you,” Tristan said. “Old friend.”

  The C-Mech’s expression changed to a bizarre mix of fury and puzzlement. It could clearly understand sarcasm but didn’t appear to know exactly how to respond to it.

  “And you, Simms,” it said, turning to me. “Excellent work in tracking him down. By doing so, you have succeeded where many before you have not.” The C-Mech looked directly at Ida as it said the last part, leaving no doubt as to its intended meaning. Ida stiffened and tried to let the insult run off her back.

  “All prisoners as ordered, sir,” she said.

  “All except one,” the C-Mech said. “Now where might she be, I wonder?”

  “These were all the personnel on the boat,” Ida said, defensively.

  “I think not,” said the C-Mech. “No matter. She will turn up eventually, I’m sure.”

  “We took this from the old man,” Ida said, stepping forward and handing Tristan’s leather satchel to the C-Mech, which ripped it open and found the glowing blue ball inside.

  “Ahhhhhh,” it said. “I have been looking for this for quite some time indeed. Ever since it was stolen from me all those years ago.”

  “Are you quite sure it wasn’t you who stole it in the first place, old chap?” Tristan said. “I don’t believe they were ours to disturb.”

  “Everything is mine,” the C-Mech snapped.

  “Well then I suppose I did steal it,” said Tristan. “Just as I am stealing the air that I am breathing this very moment.”

  The C-Mech looked like it was about to grab Tristan by the throat to get some of that stolen air back, but it resisted.

  “We have both been waiting for this day,” it said. “At last we’re finally going to see what was hidden under the ice.”

  “I’m probably wasting my breath…but don’t do this, Henry,” Tristan said. “Look what you’ve become. Don’t become an even bigger monster in the process.”

  Instead of replying, the C-Mech managed an approximati
on of a grin and strode back out to the middle of the platform. When it began speaking, its voice was automatically amplified so that the people in the stands could hear it.

  “As you all know, we’ve been waiting for this day for a long time!” it said. “You’ve all worked extremely hard to help this happen, and for that I give you my sincerest thanks for a job well done.”

  The crowd cheered.

  “In a moment, we will activate the charges that will blow the seven hundred eighty-seven individual dams holding in the water from the melted ice sheet. This will cause an almost instantaneous rise of global sea levels by nearly three hundred feet!”

  The crowd cheered again. I looked at Tristan in disbelief.

  “Did he just say three hundred feet?” I whispered.

  Tristan nodded. “Approximately.”

  “But that…”

  “…is enough to kill about half the global population in a single swoop,” the C-Mech finished my sentence for me. “I know the optics of this move are bad, but once those remaining see the bigger picture, I’m sure they’ll come around.”

  “You’re crazy!” I yelled. “That’s…” What was it? Genocide seemed like entirely too small a word for it. All of the worst dictators and mass murderers in history put together didn’t even come close to a number like that (not that Stalin, Hitler and Mao didn’t give it the old college try). “That’s mass murder!”

  The C-Mech nodded to Ida, who punched me quickly and fiercely in the gut. I landed on my knees, momentarily unable to breathe.

  “We all know we had to make some hard decisions, here,” the C-Mech went on. “If sea levels had slowly crept up over time, no doubt our little project here would have been discovered and somebody somewhere would have tried to stop us. Rest assured, we did not just decide to kill three billion people without giving the matter a great deal of thought.”

  After a few anxious moments flopping on the deck, I managed to get air back into my lungs. Stars flickered at the edge of my field of vision. Was I imagining this? I could hear the crowd cheering again.