It is now quite late and I’m tired. We’re sleeping in the hotel above the Shediac shelter. We’re only a few hours away from our old bunker, where Mike, Dr. Shevchuk, John and the others continue to monitor the world’s situation. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been on the road for a month already.
Street is posted as a sentry on the roof of the building to watch for Skins. I’ll be taking his place shortly. We moved the Fluxor and three other hovers to the alley next to the staircase leading to this shelter. If the Skins arrive, we’ll be ready, with plans set for escape and our entire store of weaponry at our quick disposal. Although I don’t believe the Skins will be able to find this bunker.
Beginning tomorrow, even though we are tempted to visit our friends, we’ll travel southwest through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and hopefully arrive safely in Richmond, Virginia where a large group of survivors is presently believed to be in hiding. I’m excited to cover so much ground in such a short amount of time, to get as far away as possible from the Skins.
Speaking with Mike, Yurgi and John tonight, we learned that the Skins who approached us in Amqui reached us by covering over 100 miles in a matter of hours. Mike thinks they could have traveled that distance in only a couple of hours, but they didn’t appear to be looking for us. They just happened to find us.
The Skins seem to have unlimited endurance and ferocious speed. What is most unfortunate is that any human survivors we expected to find in Amqui this morning, had we not fled, were probably being digested in the vile stomachs of the Skins by the time we were awoken last night. Thankfully, we arrived in time to vaccinate and warn our new friends in Shediac.
June 20, 2093, 8:30 AM—Shift
“Did you find out anything about that guy, Cain; the guy I was telling you about last night?” I asked John over the MEHD.
“No, but he sure looks familiar,” John replied. “We traced him back from the attack and got a close up of him a couple days earlier. He looks like someone I’ve seen before. Otherwise, we’ve got nothing on him. Sorry.”
“Funny, Anta thought he looked familiar too. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy.”
“Probably just a coincidence,” John said.
June 22, 10:05 PM—Richmond, Virginia—Shift
We arrived in Richmond late last night. Today, we spent the day visiting several bunkers where a total of 148 people were vaccinated. Not one of them looked sick. It was incredible! Maybe the potency and spread of AE is slowing, or the people still alive have figured out how to avoid contamination. Either way, we’re hopeful that anybody we find alive moving forward will be able to benefit from an inoculation and ultimately live.
In other news, Dr. Shevchuk contacted us this evening to inform us that bunkers all over the world have released the vaccination to the public—what’s left of it—through teams like ours. Those teams are traveling as far and wide as possible. Unfortunately, according to Mike’s best estimates, the numbers of people vaccinated with the damaged E-rase from Toronto has likely reached into the thousands. The Toronto groups went into northern and western Canada and Alaska, where the cold seemed to keep the disease at bay and many more people were still alive. Those groups, having no contact with any central communication hub, continue to spread that defective vaccination, traveling in all directions. And worse, as they mutate, they are probably attacking and/or eating the living all along the way.
Mike is tracking a group that’s nearing the Bering Strait. Unfortunately, he hasn’t seen any of the early signs of rabidity in that group yet. He expects that, if they reach any population center before they all turn crazy, the spread of the damaged E-rase will continue into Asia. At present, there’s no apparent way to stop those who are continuing to spread Toronto’s E-rase through the northern states either.
There have been multiple attempts, by both Toronto and our bunker, to contact anybody who will answer; but nobody is responding. Toronto even sent out a team, who had been vaccinated with the corrected version or E-rase, to try to kill a small group of Skins nearby, but the two humans were killed and eaten by a mob that was much larger than anticipated. Apparently, we were luckier than them when we escaped from Amqui.
I didn’t ask for many details though, knowing that my job is simply to help as many survivors as I can. I’ll leave the fixing of that problem to someone better able to meet it.
June 24—The Moon
“Great to have you back!” Jonas said cheerfully as he clapped Hasani on the back.
“It’s great to be back, healthy!” Hasani replied. “So, let’s go get Alan. That guy’s got to be miserable, all alone out there.”
“Hasani,” Jonas said slowly, “Alan hasn’t replied to our calls over the last couple of hours. As soon as you com’d that you were on your way back, I began trying to reach him. I’m a little worried.”
“Really? What could have happened to him?” Hasani asked, as he looked around the room at the others.
“We don’t know exactly,” Jonas replied. “We’ve been searching all of the sensors and computers in the various shells for any sign of life, anywhere. But over the past two hours, the only person we’ve seen out there is you. The sensors at the German shell have been acting up though, so he could still be there; and he could be just fine. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
“How are the sensors acting up?”
“Well, a few hours ago, before you contacted us, the system monitoring the life support system in the German shell started fluctuating, meaning that the atmospheric system may be malfunctioning. The computers say there’s still enough atmosphere to sustain life, but just a few minutes ago, the system went into overdrive. If the computers are correct, the system is pumping breathable atmosphere into the shell at an alarming rate. The whole thing could burst if the pressure gets too high.”
“How long would that take?”
“I have no idea,” Jonas replied. “Anyone else?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Then let’s go. Do we have his last known coordinates?”
“Yeah,” Jonas replied. “The rover’s ready. Let’s go.”
Hasani turned and headed toward the port, then turned back around to face the group. “You guys are all vaccinated already, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tom replied. “We took care of that this morning after our conference.”
“Good.”
Hasani and Jonas traveled across the moon’s surface as quickly as their rover would move.
“So, have you learned anything new about Alan?” Hasani asked as they bumped along the moon’s rough surface.
“Actually, yes. I did some digging on the guy, like we had planned. You know, to see why he felt like colleagues in Brazil had abandoned him.”
“And?”
“And, not much. But it looks like he is, or was, part of some paramilitary outfit out of Connecticut. Leader by the name of Franconi. I couldn’t find much about it on the Net, but there seems to be some kind of connection with the IWO. I don’t know what kind of connection though. Anyway, not much else. But maybe his group was supposed to try to get him home before the communications went out.”
“That’s assuming there was anybody in his group still alive on Earth,” Hasani said.
“Right.”
As the rover approached the German shell, the men began to see floating debris. The air was dusty, and they could see only the vague outline of the shell in the distance. Wind—strong wind—was pushing against the front of the rover, slowing their speed.
“What’s going on?” Hasani asked. “I didn’t think the moon had wind.”
“You’re right,” Jonas replied. “I don’t like the look of this.”
“We’re in the right place?”
“Yes, we’re in the right place. That’s the German shell. But something isn’t right here,” Jonas said, slowly. A gust of wind hit the rover and pushed it several inches sideways across the rocky ground.
Hasani slowed the rover’s speed as the clouds of dust became thicker and the winds picked up in intensity. “Whatever is happening here wasn’t happening yesterday,” he said.
“You were here?” Jonas asked.
“No, but I was close enough to see the shell and to know that this wind and dust weren’t here.”
“So, whatever happened just barely happened,” Jonas said.
As the rover crept closer to the shell, it became clear to the men just what was occurring.
“Look at that hole!” Jonas said.
“Wow, that’s what’s causing the wind, right? The shell actually broke open!”
“Yes. The atmospheric pressure must have gone too high. A hole that size would be letting out tremendous amounts of air that had, until probably just a few minutes ago, been trapped inside the shell. If Alan was in there, he may be out here now.”
“But he hasn’t responded to your coms in a couple of hours, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then something may have happened to him before the shell cracked open.”
“Well, let’s see if we can get in there,” Jonas said.
They continued their slow approach toward the shell’s main outer portal, the wind pushing and pulling the rover laterally several inches at a time. When they finally reached the portal, Jonas punched the codes remotely from the rover. The portal didn’t open.
“I’m going out there,” Hasani said.
“No, you’re not,” Jonas replied sternly. “That will get you killed. That wind is too strong. You’ll be blown away, even tethered to the rover. I’ll never be able to pull you back in. The wind isn’t going to stop if the shell’s atmospheric system is still functioning. It’s going to be working overtime to compensate for lost atmosphere inside and that’s going to keep the wind pouring out of the hole until the system gets so overworked that it shuts down, or unless there’s an auto-override that recognizes that it’s a breach and shuts it down. And who knows how long that will take. You’re not going out there. It’s suicide.”
“But . . .” Hasani began. Then he stopped talking, his eyes attempting to focus on something in the distance. Jonas looked in the direction Hasani was looking and gasped.
“That’s him, isn’t it? That’s Alan.”
“I think so,” Hasani replied quietly.
They watched in silence as a man clinging to the edge of the hole 80 meters in the air was buffeted back and forth, slamming into the sides of the jagged hole. The wind was tearing at him; and his clothes—not a space suit—were ripping apart at the seams.
“He’s going to run out of air, even with the machines still pumping,” Jonas said.
“He won’t be able to hold on long enough to have the chance to run out of air,” Hasani replied under his breath.
“Do you think he did this to himself?” Jonas asked. “Committed suicide, I mean?”
“Why would he?”
“I don’t know; but holes probably don’t just appear in these shells, and portals don’t just freeze shut. None of this could have happened by chance.”
“Well, maybe . . .”
Hasani stopped speaking mid-sentence. The men watched in horror as Alan shot out into the darkness beyond the shell. They quickly lost sight of him as his body was surrounded by clouds of dust and debris.
After a moment of stunned silence, Jonas pulled away from the shell and headed in the direction they’d seen the man fly. They didn’t speak for nearly three hours as they searched in ever wider bands around the perimeter of the shell. Nearly eight kilometers from the German shell, they finally found Alan Stein’s body. His sojourn on the moon was over. They buried his body where they found him.
June 28, 2093, 9:50 PM—Shift
“I can’t sleep in this crappy bed,” Street said as he tried to roll onto his side in the cramped confines of his bunkbed. His shuffling made the whole trailer shake.
We’re “camped” in a huge RV, next to a barn, on a farm outside Vidalia, Georgia. The RV wouldn’t start, so we couldn’t move it into the barn, as we would have liked to have done. The adjacent farmhouse, like so much of Vidalia and the surrounding towns, is in ruins—burnt to the ground.
The chaos and violence that occurred in the southern states when the plague broke out was evidently terrible. Vidalia is like nearly every town and city we’ve passed through in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Windows are broken, vehicles of all types lay in the streets, overturned, and blackened. Trash floats on the breeze and is piled high against fences and the sides of burned-out buildings. Usually pristine walls and sidewalks are littered with graffiti yelling obscenities and curses against the IWO, the U.S. government, various races, and the plague.
Nearly every store and home that isn’t burned to the ground now sits with open doors and broken windows, showing us the overwhelming destruction inside. There are thousands of bodies in the streets, rotting. But most of them are no more than skin and bones now. I don’t envy the people who lived here prior to their deaths, and my heart aches.
“At least you have a bed,” Angel replied. “You want us to stick you up on the roof for the Skins to gnaw at overnight?”
“If the smell doesn’t kill him first,” I added, solemnly.
The stench here, even outside of town where we are, is awful. It is so different from the north. In the cities and towns of Canada and the northern United States, fewer windows were broken and most doors were still closed. In those northern towns, it seemed like most people either died in their homes or in hospitals, as I had previously thought. With windows and doors closed, the smell of rot and decay stayed mostly inside. Here, though, and throughout these southern towns, the smell is abominable. It’s actually hard to breath. And, of course, there’s nobody to clean up the mess and bury the bodies. Maybe some day the smells will fade in time.
“Leave Street alone,” Anta said, smiling. “He’s a big dude.”
“Are you calling me fat?” Street joked.
Street has a way of making serious situations a bit lighter. Having him around has made this whole situation bearable. Of course, having Anta around is pretty nice too! If I didn’t have Anta to talk to at the end of each day, I’d think this whole enterprise was for nothing. She gives me hope that we can rebuild our society, maybe starting with us some day.
“John’s calling,” I said. “Quiet down, and leave the fat guy alone for a few minutes.”
“Hey John,” Anta said as she opened my MEHD, snickering at my joke. John’s somber face appeared in the air above the MEHD. He looked tired. Mostly, he looked worried. The joviality we had just felt melted away in an instant.
“John, why the glum face man?” I asked. “We’re the ones being hunted out here.”
“Well, I’d like to say I’m just tired, but that’s only part of the problem. Actually Shift, you’re right. We think you are being hunted.”
“What do you mean?” Street asked. Hunting was his game. His eyes showed a bit of intrigue at the prospect of being hunted.
“We’re still tracking the Skins, but they’re also tracking you. That’s what I mean.”
“They’re tracking us?” Anta asked. Her tone voiced the surprise that we all felt.
“Yes,” John replied. “The older, more mature Skins, like Cain and others who’ve been ‘Skins’ longer, are no longer just randomly looking for people. They seem to be directing the search. They actually look like they’re raising armies, so to speak, with the younger Skins doing their bidding.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“Yup, but it’s worse than that,” John continued. “The Skins are no longer eating living people.”
“That sounds better, not worse,” Street said.
“Oh, it’s not ‘better’ Street. I said they’re not eating living people any more. Instead, they’re just attacking and biting the living. They’re only eating corpses.”
“Can you tell why they�
��re doing that, the biting I mean?” I asked.
“No, we don’t know why,” John replied. “But we do know what’s happening after someone is bitten.”
“The way you said that sounds very bad,” Street said.
He was right about that. John’s face was turning paler as he continued to talk.
“It is very bad. I don’t know how to explain this without freaking you out, so I’ll just say it and let you freak out. Those who have been bitten change. They morph, somehow, into Skins within a couple of minutes. Sometimes, it only takes a few seconds.”
Angel let out a little shriek, but quickly clasped her hand over her mouth. The rest of us just sat there on the checkered cloth seats of the posh motor home, staring, open-mouthed at John’s face above the MEHD.
“How do you know, or . . . how can you tell that the people are changing once they’re bitten?” I asked quietly, several seconds after John’s announcement.
“Well,” John began slowly, “before, when we were watching footage of the people who were inoculated with Toronto’s vaccine, the change occurred over a period of days. It was only by watching the same group for a long period of time that we could see them getting faster and stronger and see them lose hair and rip their clothes off. But with these new Skins—the people who are bitten rather than injected—the change is nearly instantaneous. Within a matter of seconds, or a couple of minutes at most, they stand up and join the throng. The physical changes aren’t obvious right away, until they start to move. The new Skins move as fast and as awkwardly as the Skins who attacked them. Then, over a period of a few hours, they start to lose hair and get naked.”
Tomorrow We Rise (The Killing Sands Book 2) Page 8