The momentary illusion of weightlessness vanished and I plummeted into the thick sack of alien flesh that filled the expanse of the auditorium floor.
It did not burst and I did not plunge into it like a living hypodermic needle. I crawled through an undergrowth of gore and slime, the footing too unstable to stand. Through the translucent membrane lit by a green luminescence I could see dissolving flesh melting off digested bones and feel the peristaltic contractions of the expanse of Adam.
The evols did not react to my presence among them. Instead they moaned and swayed, their legs rooted into the quivering earth like undead trees. I worked my way to the wall, holding on to hanging creepers of flesh to keep my footing and move closer to the stage.
‘What do you think of my work?’ A voice thick with pain and exhaustion came from the wall. I leaned out and stared upwards. Doctor Haumann. Mounted on the wall like a hunting trophy.
‘I think you might finally win first prize at the science fair with this one, Doc.’
To his credit Haumann managed a smile. ‘Is he not magnificent? He will be their god, the source of all things necrotic.’
‘We made it to Woomera. Wainright made Else the weapon you wanted her to be.’
Haumann gave a shuddering sigh, moving slightly within the imprisoning cocoon of stinking flesh that held him. ‘Thank you… is she safe?’
‘Yes, she’s safe and I’m infected with your cure. I’m here to fuck things up.’
Haumann nodded, ‘It is too late for us. But you can build the world anew. You can-’ A tentacle burst through the meat wall and flowered in Haumann’s chest. It ripped him open, shattering his ribs and spraying me with his blood. The feeler pumped, gorging itself on Haumann’s corpse. I wiped the crap from eyes and moved on.
The stench grew so intense my brain stopped noticing. I slipped and crawled down the length of the huge room. Finally, grasping hold of a crusted over rupture, I pulled myself up and lay gasping for breath on the undulating surface of the stage. The meat around me shivered and with a wet ripping sound a tentacle burst up between my legs. I scrambled back, expecting a bone spur to slam down and suck me dry. Instead the bulbous tip split open and a great rolling eye twisted to focus on me. It was unlike anything I had seen before. It spun slowly within that grey fleshy socket, irises of different colours peered out at me before it flexed and rolled again.
‘Yeah, I’m here for you motherfucker. This is your end standing here,’ my blood seethed and my skin felt like it might burst into flame at any moment.
‘You have failed in your mission,’ Charlie Aston loomed up behind me. A misshapen fist the size of a football clubbed down on my shoulder. I dropped to my knees and rolled. Stabbing into the floor of undulating flesh with my sword I pulled myself up.
‘Hey Charlie, how’s the eye?’
‘I knew you were trouble,’ Charlie said. His face, already distorted with whatever jacked up shit he’d pumped into his veins, now made even more horrific by the weeping pit of his eye. ‘You showed up and Haumann was just going to hand over his first batch of anti-viral Tankbread to you. Another day and I would have sabotaged the project. Killed them all. But that damn Soo-Yong made his move too early.’
‘Lucky me,’ I said. My shoulder felt like concrete and I took a moment to twist it, feeling something pop back into place.
‘But you are all alone now, and your fate is going to be the same as all the others,’ Charlie pulled the remains of his shirt away. His body had mutated beyond mere steroid abuse. This was something alien.
‘Adam’s a growing boy. How do you like playing nanny?’ I lifted my sword and grinned.
‘He is beyond your understanding! He is a god!’ Charlie’s face swelled with an angry purple flush. Howling pure hatred, he sprang at me like an angry red gorilla. Everything slowed down to a frame-by-frame speed. I felt my eyes pound as absolute awareness flooded my senses. I took a step, dropped to one knee and thrust the sword upwards with both hands. Charlie ran right into the blade. The tip burst out through his back, catching on the enlarged bones of his spine, the sharpened steel twisted and then snapped. Charlie squealed and coughed, a great gush of blood bursting from his mouth. I lifted Charlie’s head and showed him the jagged haft of the sword I still held. ‘Your god is dead,’ I said and rammed the rough end of the broken blade into his gaping eye socket all the way to the hilt. Charlie shuddered and slid to the floor.
Rising to my feet I took a deep breath and looked out over the auditorium. The survivors of Soo-Yong’s attack on the Opera House were all around me, entombed alive in this hideous organism. The few that were yet to be digested had already screamed until their voices broke. Only I remained to speak for them.
‘Hey, arsehole!’ I yelled up at the crucified giant. More tentacles erupted around me and they all sprouted the glistening bone needles. With a slow tearing sound as if his chin had grown into his chest, Adam lifted his head and opened his large eyes.
‘You missed one,’ I said and gave him the finger. Both hands. Fuck you.
CHAPTER 44
Else crouched by the growing pile of dry dirt. The man in the hole didn’t look at her, he just kept shovelling and glancing at the fresh wallaby carcass stretched out by the woman’s boot. He could smell the roasting meat already and it made his belly clench. Finally the man whose name was Harcourt, judged the hole deep enough for its purpose. Climbing out he stabbed the shovel into the dirt pile.
‘Deep enough I reckon,’ he said, the hope clear in his voice.
Else stood up from her squat. ‘Lay him in there. Do it gently,’ she said. Harcourt wiped the sweat from his face with a filthy sleeve and hefted the cloth wrapped body into the grave as carefully as he could.
‘Fill it in,’ Else said. Her voice cold. Harcourt hesitated only a moment. This woman was strange as anyone he’d ever met, she carried a sword on her back and moved like someone who knew how to use it. She’d found him checking his rat-snares. Stepping out of the darkness she grabbed him by the throat. He’d offered up a prayer, figuring the damned evols had finally caught up with him. To Harcourt’s surprise, she didn’t kill him and only asked if he knew how to dig a grave. He nodded, there being no apparent benefit to saying no.
So now Harcourt found himself digging the final resting place for a corpse, a couple of days old by the smell of it. The woman left him working, saying she would be back with food as payment. Then she mounted a horse and rode away. He expected a can, maybe some dried rat. But an entire wallaby? Soon the hole was covered and Harcourt leaned on his shovel catching his breath. ‘I can make up a tombstone and put some words on it for you as well if you like,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Else glared at him.
‘Because people should know there’s a man buried here. A man who people cared enough about to bury.’
‘What do the words say?’ Else asked.
‘Ah, usually the name of the deceased, and well I don’t know what the date of his birth or of his passing are… so maybe just his name?’
‘His name?’ Else frowned.
‘Yes, what was his name? For the tombstone,’ Harcourt said again.
‘He never said,’ Else whispered and stared at the grave mound.
‘Would you like me to say a few words, for the deceased?’ Harcourt ventured after a long minute of silence.
‘What words?’ Else swiped at her tears like they were flies.
‘It’s customary to say some kind of farewell,’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Uhh no, but it’s what you do.’
Else sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and spoke to the mound of dirt. ‘You saved us all. Because of you the evols are lost and we can take back the world. You destroyed Adam, he sucked the life out of you and the anti-viral infection in your blood, it melted him,’ Else’s voice cracked and she sank to her knees, fists clenching handfuls of earth. ‘I want to hate you for leaving me. I want to hate you! But I can’t! Why can’t I hate you!?�
�� she screamed at the burial mound with all the savagery of the grief tearing her apart inside.
‘We can’t hate the ones we love, at least not for long,’ Harcourt said. Else pressed her face against the dirt and howled. She wept. Curling into a ball she screamed her anger, her hate and her love into the dirt, hoping I might hear her.
Now you know what I know. The Adam virus, the genetically engineered mutation, designed by Haumann, Mollbrooke and Wainright to resurrect dead soldiers, mutated. Spreading through air, water, food and soil. It’s present in everything but lies dormant until the human host dies. After death, an awakening and the onslaught of unshielded understanding. The virus seizes that last spark of consciousness and creates an overwhelming flood through the senses. The dead see everything, they hear everything, they feel everything and everything is hungry.
Focusing on just one thing for very long is almost impossible. Routines are soothing, well learned patterns are reassuring. Noise, bright light, the hissing roar of living tissues, these things are too much. Until the dead feed and then it's like blowing your wad for about an hour. After that initial taste of living meat the need to feed consumes everything.
With the destruction of Adam the central mind structure collapsed and the evol mind network failed. Only now, as I lay here cloaked in dry dirt, hearing Else grieve above me, I walk through my memories and experience the scope of my growing awareness. The necrosis connection still exists. The engineered viral elements within my cells are sister to those of Adam and they thrive still within Else and our unborn child. If I choose to use it the evols will rise again.
I could reach out and touch Else, speak to her, comfort her. Yet if I use the power of the viral network to connect to her, I must open myself to the walking dead in their lost billions. The fading evols, who even now degenerate into the uncontrolled zombies we call the feral dead. I remain silent so in time they can be destroyed and Else can raise our child in a peaceful world.
I take some comfort in knowing that my story is one only the dead will ever hear.
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Mannering is an award winning writer living in Wellington, New Zealand.
Paul has published dozens of short stories and radio plays in a range of genres across many different international markets.
His first collection of short stories, ‘The Man Who Could Not Climb Stairs and Other Strange Stories,’is also available.
In 2007 Paul co-founded BrokenSea Audio Productions, which podcasts free audio drama each week to an audience of millions.
Paul lives with his wife Damaris and their three cats, one of which is a seal-point Siamese with Aspergers.
Tankbread is Paul’s first novel.
For Tankbread news and updates visit the blog
http://Tankbread.blogspot.com/
www.brokensea.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
About The Author
Tankbread Page 28