Tipping Point (Project Renova Book 1)

by Terry Tyler

  "It's not the end." Ridgeway broke into his thoughts as though he could read them. "Never was meant to be, still isn't, even though it happened before it was meant to and went a little itsy bit haywire. There are enough people left to rebuild, when the dust has cleared, whenever that might be." His sweaty face shone, his lavish moustache decorated with cigarette ash.

  Scott's chest was so tight he felt he might have trouble breathing. "Before it was meant to?"

  Ridgeway stubbed out his cigarette, chucked his drink down his throat and picked up the empty bottle of Ardbeg. "Bloody empty, eh? Did you swipe the last of it?"

  "No." Scott felt his mouth turn up at one corner. "You bagsied it, remember?"

  "Ah." He took the Isle of Jura, squinting at the label. "Looks okay. We'll give this chap a go, eh?" And he sloshed the liquid into his tumbler, drinking a third of it down straight away. Scott watched as he leant his elbows on the table, leaning his chin on interlinked fingers.

  "Rightio. Let me explain. It'll be a blighter because I'm about twenty-seven sheets to the howling wind, but I'll do my best."

  "Okay."

  "D'you know what Hitler said? At least, I think it was Hitler. He said, make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they'll believe it."

  "Yes, I've heard that."

  "Bit like old Barack Obama and all that 'change' nonsense, or is that before your time?"

  "No. I'm twenty-eight."

  "Really? You look about nineteen. Not that I don't think Obama was a splendid chap, of course. Not his fault he was given a bad script."

  "Can we stop veering off topic?"

  "Sorry, sorry, sorry. Damn it, I've always been easily distracted. I see this trait as positive rather than negative, but, sadly, others don't." Ridgeway shut his eyes. "Right. Now. Listen. By the year 2050, by which time I will, with the luck of the Ridgeways—which is piss-poor at the best of times—have shuffled off this mortal coil, the population of the world was estimated to be in the region of nine point seven billion. That's over two billion more than existed on the planet up until a few months ago. Now, you're a bright lad, you can work out why this is."

  "Improved medicine, normal exponential growth."

  "Correct. The wiping out of diseases that used to keep the population in check, no world wars because everyone's so damn scared of nukes, no natural disasters, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The old aren't dying; why do you think care homes are filled with Alzheimer's patients? Most of the wrinklies who have it should be dead; their brains are ready to leave the party, but modern medicine keeps their bodies alive. By the start of the next century, world population was estimated to stand at eleven point two billion, which is simply not sustainable. Resources will run out, and as robots take the place of people in industries across the globe, unemployment will become a massive problem, resulting in half the world being nothing more than economically unproductive mouths to feed. We now control Mother Nature; she can no longer fight back and keep the population at manageable levels, so other methods need to be employed. Sterilisation via drinking water has been discussed for some years, but if depopulation is to be implemented, one might as well take the opportunity to ensure that the new world is peopled by the cream rather than the dregs. Hence Project Renova. Latin for 'renew', in case you're not up on these things. Fuck me, I think I've drunk myself sober."

  Scott tried to breathe slowly, to keep his heart rate steady. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

  "Yes, I've just realised I'm talking almost coherently—"

  "I mean about targeted depopulation."

  "I know, I know, you silly billy. That's the trouble with you lot, you never get the joke. So damn serious. But yes, I would imagine so." Ridgeway opened his eyes, and sat back. "Kerivoula Lanosa fever, once a strictly bat-only illness, was manipulated for its new purpose, with vaccinations given to the sector of the human race worthy of inclusion in the brave new world."

  Scott narrowed his eyes. "The doctors and scientists, the teachers, those with a high IQ, creative geniuses—"

  "The word is genii, and you're wrong." Ridgeway shook his head. "What we—they—don't want is the clever little buggers with the high IQs. They're the tiresome sods like your good self, who dig and delve, want answers, who consider alternatives, want to make changes. No, no, no. We want the worker bees. Mr and Mrs Average, of commonplace intelligence, who—if they ever stopped to think about it, which they don't—know that society works best when the masses take direction from the few, without question, and everybody knows their place. They respond in the required way to advertising and propaganda, put ultimate trust in doctors, politicians and newsreaders, take pride in being productive members of society and take the world at face value. Good worker bees eat their five a day, and whatever else they're fucking told to, and lead clean, healthy, upstanding and law-abiding lives."

  "And those who don't fit into this category?" Scott said, quietly.

  Ridgeway just raised his eyebrows, and drank, slowly, looking at him over the top of his glass.

  "The old, the disabled," Scott went on, slowly, thinking as he spoke. "Asylum seekers, anyone with a psychological disorder, those who claim benefits, drinkers and drug users, anyone who has ideas that don't conform to the perceived norm, and dares to express them."

  Ridgeway shrugged. "If you're building a brand new world, you take the opportunity to rid yourself of the waste matter of the old one. And you don't let the troublemakers in, either."

  "It's mass murder."

  "That's one way of looking at it. The other way is this: it's what nature used to do for us, until we got so good at saving mankind that we saved too much of it." He put his drink down. "Are we done now? Because I'd really like to get a bit of sleep. It's been a bloody long year."

  "We're far from done."

  Ridgeway laughed. "Bollocks, I thought you might say that. Best have another swift one then." He drained and refilled his glass.

  "It didn't really originate in Africa, did it?"

  Ridgeway rolled his eyes. "For Christ's sake. I thought we'd already established that. I'm not going to have to spell it all out for you, am I?"

  "No." Scott's brain felt mushy, his thoughts not coming together as clearly as they should; he was getting drunk. Light years away from Major Charles Ridgeway's level of inebriation, but drunk, nevertheless, something he hadn't experienced for some time. He shut his eyes, and put down his glass. There was so much he wanted to know, so many questions with which he'd driven himself mad over those months locked up in that little room. "Private Life. The social networking site. Dex—my friend, Dexter Northam—he was sure it was a tool for online snooping, right from the word 'go'."

  Ridgeway laughed. In the candlelight, his face looked quite demonic. "There are no flies on you lot, are there? Yes. Quite a brilliant idea, I thought. Well, of course, social networking sites have fulfilled that purpose for many years, but Private Life was designed specifically for it. Amazes me, the amount of people who blab their business to the whole world, day in, day out. I've never seen the attraction, myself, though my daughters do so with great enthusiasm." He rubbed his chin. "Ah, the good old internet. I don't miss it. You're out of a job, now, though, aren't you?"

  Scott tried hard to collect his thoughts; he sensed that, at any moment, his volatile fellow drinker might decide to kick him out, and any other questions would remain forever unanswered. Come on, come on. "What you were saying early on—"

  "What? Seriously, chum, I've had enough of this now. You can take one of the cars outside; why don't you bugger off to wherever you want to go and let me get some shut-eye?"

  "Hang on, I'm trying to think. Oh yes. That was it. You said Patient Zero arrived three months early. Explain."

  Ridgeway yawned. "Jesus Christ, it's not hard to work out, is it? We were jogging along nicely, doling out vaccinations to all those good little worker bees who'd earned their pass into Planet Earth two-point-zero, and stage two wasn't supposed to be
rolled out until November. But somewhere, somehow, it got out."

  "In England? I mean, was Patient Zero in England?"

  "Of course it was." He was quiet for a moment. "England was the beta test."

  "Eh?" Scott leant forwards. "Beta test? What do you mean?"

  "Grand Britannia. Formerly the proud owner of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known, now one big major fuck-up with race riots, unemployment, anti-government protests, overcrowding, inflation, no industry worth talking about—our little island was chosen by the Yanks for the pilot, if you like. So they could monitor panic levels, how quickly the virus would spread, if it could be contained, how a society would cope with total breakdown. It was a dress rehearsal, starting with the vaccination programme, to see how the chosen would band together against the unclean. And, afterwards, if they felt that the wiping out of certain groups was a good thing. You know, 'I'm alright, Jack', and all that social hierarchy stuff that the British are so damn good at!" He laughed. "Such a shame it got out, it cocked up a brilliant plan. After the vaccinations were completed, next was to come the placebo group, so natural immunity could be monitored. Then, the virus was to be released."

  "Released? Into the air?"

  Ridgeway shook his head. "Oh, no, no, no. Via the vaccination programme. A few at a time. That way, they could observe how it spread, the effects of mass panic, how quickly order would break down. In other words, to assess what systems needed to be put in place in the US and other selected countries to make the process as smooth-running as possible. All routes out of the UK were to be closed the minute Patient Zero emerged, so it could be safely observed at a distance."

  Scott sat back, drained. "Dex was right. They were going to inject us with the virus." It was a statement, not a question.

  "Correct."

  "But—but how could they hope to get away with it? All the people involved—surely some of them said, hang on, this isn't right?"

  "Aha. No. It was organised on a need-to-know basis. Everyone who took part, from the data collection workforce to the lab assistants, to the news reporters and the medics in the vaccination units, they were all given only the information necessary to do their job. A newsreader reads the news he's given. Vaccination unit staff think they're doing a worthy job. A lab assistant packs a box of vials containing the virus, but all he knows is that he's packing up a potentially hazardous substance for some classified research project, and takes the necessary precautions. Even the selection of these first worker bees was part of the experiment, to find whether suitable personality types could be accurately assessed. Only the privileged few knew exactly what was going on."

  "This is unreal." Scott's mind raced as he attempted to gather his thoughts. Even Dex and Jeff, who always suspected the worst, hadn't imagined the truly diabolical extent of the plan.

  "Oh yes," Ridgeway went on, in his stride, now, "and that lovely little place on the Norfolk coast, Shipden—that was chosen for observation of how a quarantine situation would play out. See if they would make trouble or try to escape. And you know what? They accepted it. It was all a charade, of course. There wasn't any mysterious outbreak until it was introduced, after the cordon went up; amazing what people will believe. Shame; nice little place, Shipden. I went there on holiday once, as a child." He gazed skywards, then gave the appearance of shaking himself back to reality, and lit a cigarette. "To sum up, Grand Britannia became a slave; at least, the lab rat for the destructive behemoth that is the United States of America." He raised his glass to the ceiling. "Queen Victoria must be turning in her grave."

  "But how could human beings do this to each other—"

  Ridgeway shrugged. "Oh, put a sock in it, ducky. Man has always committed atrocities against man. Research the Marshall Islands, post World War Two." He laughed. "Oh, no, silly me, you can't; there's no internet!"

  "But this is England," Scott whispered, feeling foolish even as he said it.

  "Ah, yes, good old Blighty: cricket, thoroughly decent chaps, Blitz spirit and family values, right? Grow up."

  Scott was glad he was slightly drunk, the warm haze of Scotch anaesthetising his mind from this terrible information. "But a lot of people must have known, all the same."

  "Not many, actually. Only the super-powerful and their behind the scenes men, who went to the hush-hush population crisis summit in Vancouver, were in on the whole dirty little secret."

  Scott frowned. "But you went?"

  "Goodness, no, I'm small fry." He blew out a long stream of smoke. "I'm only important enough to be left behind to keep order in the whole of fucking Northumberland and Cumbria, that's all."

  "How did you find out, then?"

  "Fella opened his mouth whilst in his cups, like I have with you. Well, actually, it was pillow talk, if I'm honest." His eyes filled with tears. "Promised he'd make sure there was a place for me on Logan Island. Unfortunately for me, he was lying. About Logan Island, I mean; the rest of it's definitely true." He wiped a tear away with his forefinger. "Must've had a crisis of conscience or something; I suspect he was just offloading, now. Yes, yes of course I was a tad alarmed at first, too. But then I thought, does it really matter if a load of immigrants, criminals, benefit frauds and troublemakers get evaporated?" He frowned, and swirled his drink around in its glass. "Have to say, it's different when you're sitting opposite one of those troublemakers, though. 'Specially when he turns out to be quite a decent chap."

  "Should I feel honoured?"

  "Naughty, now you're being sarcastic, aren't you?" Ridgeway pointed a finger. "Of course, what the project really needed was another whole planet for the beta test, not one island within it." This appeared to amuse him greatly. "I can just see them, old POTUS, the PM, all the fucking global corporation big nobs, sitting round the bar in their tropical paradise, saying, Well, we made a stinking cock up of that, didn't we? Never mind, we'll get it right in another thousand years when it needs doing again!"

  A wave of nausea overwhelmed Scott. "So what's the plan now?"

  Ridgeway sprawled across the desk, chin resting on hands. "Who the fuck knows? I expect someone will appear at some point and give me my orders. Until then—"

  "I mean, what's going to happen to the country? To the survivors?"

  "Every man for himself, chum. Maybe one day the Yanks will land and rebuild, or maybe they won't consider it worth the bother. We're one little island, that's all. They've already demolished many of the inner cities, without worrying too much if anyone was still alive. Might bomb the whole thing out of existence, who knows?"

  Scott clutched the arm of his chair. "No. No. They couldn't—all those people—no—"

  "Keep your hair on, sweetheart. I was only kidding, they won't do that. No reason to, if the illness dies out, as far as I can see. Waste of good agricultural land and munitions, aside from anything, and it's not like any of the diseases associated with thousands of dead bodies will float across the sea. Chunnel's been flattened. Eventually the unburied dead will become dust, I imagine."

  Scott swallowed hard, tried to pull himself together. "So that's it?"

  "Yep. That's it."

  "Why don't you get out? Go somewhere else? You don't have to stay here."

  "Where would I go?" He lifted his face towards the window, and Scott saw a tear run down his face. "Wife left me two years ago, when she found out why I haven't fucked her since our daughters were born. Buggered off to Spain to live with her sister, took the girls with her. I doubt I'll ever see them again; they think I'm disgusting. Old Johnny Big Mouth fucked off and left me. There's nothing, except this."

  Scott almost offered a gesture of sympathy, but stopped. If this man didn't kill Gia, he sanctioned it, and the murder of those patients. He kept me locked up for months, when he could have let me go. "Why did you tell me everything?" he asked. "Why are you letting me go now?"

  Ridgeway looked up at him, his face drawn and empty. "Because I haven't had any radio communications from my superiors for over a week, a
nd I think they've left me to it. Because it was good to have somebody to talk to apart from that bunch out there, for a change. Because you wanted to know, and it was fun to see your eyes go all big and googly with horror. And because it really, really, doesn't fucking matter any more. There's a dark green Mondeo out there, keys under one of the wheel arches. Take it."

  He swivelled round in his chair to face the wall behind him.

  Scott stood up. Without looking back, he made his way to the car park, scarcely noticing the soldiers slouching around the entrance hall and the waiting room, drinking bottles of beer, talking, laughing.

  Outside, lamps were aflame, lighting up the front of the building. It looked grand, beautiful, but Scott scarcely noticed. The relief of being outside in the open air once more, free, was so great that tears poured from his eyes, his legs weak with desperation to get out of there before something happened to drag him back.

  As he opened the door of the Mondeo, he turned to look up at the building that had been his prison for the past few months, and saw Mick sitting in one of the windows, smoking a cigarette. Scott waved, and his friend waved back; Scott gestured to him to come down, to come with him, but Mick shook his head.

  As he drove off, he heard a gunshot ring out. For one split second he considered going back, but kept his eyes on the road in front of him, and drove on.

  "I found an empty house along the road and curled up for the night," he says. "I didn't want to drive too far in the pitch dark, especially not while I was half-cut. In the morning I started out again, but I got a bloody flat. So I walked for a bit, and then I found a mountain bike. And here I am."

  No one speaks. I'm guessing none of us wants to make the first comment, because whatever we say is going to sound trite.

  In the end, Phil breaks the silence.

  "He was wrong, though, Ridgeway, about us being all powerful and in control of Mother Nature, wasn't he? The virus escaped because of human error, and that's something that can't be controlled."

  We all nod, but no one says anything.