With the boy's help, Solly managed to release the younger child and lift her out. Why were these seats so difficult to use? With his spare arm, he helped the boy to the pavement. "Well done," he said as he led him quickly around the back of the car and stood the two of them on the sidewalk. Solly left them there, crying, as he ran back to the car, grabbed the woman by the shoulder and pulled her to where her children waited.
"They need you," he bellowed, before jabbing a finger in the direction of the SUV, "he doesn't. Now take them somewhere safe!"
He turned and left her there. He had done his best, but he simply couldn't be responsible for everyone he met.
Looking back, he half expected to see the cars going up in a ball of flame, but his eyes were drawn upwards by something that his animal brain knew was all wrong before his mind caught up.
That plane was too low. Way too low. It was coming down.
He heard the descending wail just as the nose hit the side of a tall building off to his left. He stood, transfixed, for long enough to see the fireball erupt, engulfing the plane and running, roaring, down the side of the building and heading straight for him.
He glanced desperately around and just made it to the shelter of the subway entrance as liquid flame reached street level and consumed everything and everyone in its path.
Introduction
In the 1780s, a Swiss inventor created the first pedometer, a simple device used to count steps taken and distance traveled while walking. This crude device was soon introduced into the United States by Thomas Jefferson, and in the 1960s, a Japanese company released the world's first pedometer. This, arguably, was the first step toward what we now know as “wearables,” common devices in the form of watches and bracelets and even rings that connect to the internet and track your every step and heartbeat.
The rapid advance of health-monitoring technology in the increasingly competitive and antagonistic healthcare field has led to advanced devices that do more than just monitor your steps and your heart rate. Now, pacemakers can be wirelessly monitored and controlled to help ensure a patient’s heart keeps right on beating, and blood sugar levels can be checked by an implant linked to a smartphone app. Before long, the implant will also be able to deliver the right amount of insulin automatically, with no need for needles or daily blood measurements of any kind.
Today, wearables of various forms are everywhere, and the medical industry is looking for ways to turn them into diagnostic tools and a source of profit. We only await an entrepreneur with the vision to take the final step—wearables that not only monitor and diagnose, but also treat through implants embedded close to vital organs. In September of 2018, one major insurer declared it will no longer offer life insurance policies that do not include digital fitness tracking via smartwatches and other wearables.
The future is here.
By connecting these devices and the vast quantity of data they provide into the artificial intelligence technologies being developed by the global technology companies, it will become possible to predict the onset of diseases and conditions at a much earlier stage, treat many of them automatically, and to save millions of lives.
What if those devices were then hijacked by someone intent on doing harm? Someone who knew how to access the devices, manipulate them, and turn them from devices that save into ones that kill. Once installed, the implants would be almost impossible for anyone but a professional to remove without killing the patient. But a device that can restart a heart could also be used to stop it.
In the vastly interconnected world we live in, any system is only as strong as its weakest point, and though it may be built upon technologies that were considered impenetrable when they were developed, the endless march of computing power and AI allied to the never-changing dark side of human nature mean that what was once seen as the savior of humanity might become its executioner.
When people begin to drop, apparently at random, only those with guts, brains and a measure of luck stand a chance of surviving for long enough to work out what has happened and, perhaps, how to stop it before it ends in extinction.
In the world after The Long Night, you never know when your time is up.
Chapter 1
The wall of flame was gone in an instant and then the screaming started. Solly opened his eyes to utter blackness, spinning around in panic before, finally, patches of light appeared, and he knew he wasn't blind. Pain stabbed at his chest as he took a lungful of the smoke and fell again before crawling along the filthy, debris-strewn floor and pushing his mouth to the foot of a wall where he could feel a breeze of breathable air. He lay there, listening to moaning in the dark as he fought to keep the bile in his guts from rising into his throat.
Breathe, Solly, just breathe.
"Help me." It was the sound of quiet desperation. The last seconds of another soul who, moments before, had been climbing the stairs of the subway. She was probably on her way home, he thought. Well, she was going to her eternal home now.
Tears escaped from his tightly shut lids as he lay there, pulling in as little air as he could through a tiny gap between his teeth. A slickness spread up his pants and he put his hand down, fearing he'd wet himself, but it wasn't coming from him at all. He knew what it was and explored no more. Others had died around him and it was, for now, best not to look.
He remained there until the air began to clear and he was able to gently roll onto his back.
"You ok, pal?"
A face looked down at him.
"I'd taken you for another dead one, but you moved. Are you hurt bad?"
Solly pulled himself into a sitting position and looked around him. The lights of the subway—those that had survived the explosion—were now punching through the black smoke as it cleared. A couple of feet away lay the body of a woman in a pool of her own blood, flashlights bouncing from its congealing surface. He shifted himself along the wall a little as he realized that he'd been lying in the crimson puddle.
"Can you get up? I'm a medic. Here to help."
Taking the man's offered hand, Solly struggled to his feet and muttered his thanks.
"Just see if anyone else is alive, will you?" the medic replied.
Solly nodded and staggered toward the top of the stairs, but the arms and legs he could see against the light coming from below belonged to people who could no longer use his help, so, using the walls and handrails for support, he made his way around what remained of the entrance to the subway. There were no other survivors and no way out. In the dim light coming from behind, it looked as though part of the plane's fuselage had come to rest there. No, the only way out was through the subway, so, after a final check, he went back to the stairs and, stepping over the charred and stiffened remains of those that had taken the full brunt of the fireball, he moved carefully down the stairs.
The medic was kneeling beside the hunched figure of an old man. At first glance, Solly had assumed he was an African American, but then he saw the man's hands which were as pinky-white as his own. The old man was crying as wisps of smoke rose from the ruins of his face. The medic, bending over him, was sobbing as he apologized for not being able to relieve the man's torment. It was obvious that nothing could be done to save him or to make his passing quicker and Solly was about to move on, unable to bear witness any longer, when he spotted someone sitting at the bottom of the stairs, apparently oblivious to the chaos. If only the old man could be that oblivious, Solly thought. Then, a desperate idea seized him.
"Have you got any gear?" Solly said, crouching down.
"Uh?" Black-ringed eyes peered out from beneath a hood. It was a girl. She could only be in her late teens, but addiction had robbed her body of any semblance of normal growth.
Solly grabbed the filthy bag that lay beside her. She made a fitful movement but fell back immediately. "Not cool. My smack."
He pulled out a grip-seal bag with an inch of brown powder in the bottom.
As he peered at it, the old man on the steps gave a shriek of pain. Solly
took the half empty liquor bottle that lay beside the girl and tipped the powder inside before shaking it. "Sorry, his need is greater than yours," he said before getting up again and climbing the steps to where the old man sat, sobbing in pain.
"Here," he said, handing the bottle to the medic. "Alcohol and smack. The best I can do."
The medic held it to the man's mouth and watched as he swallowed. After a few moments the old man sighed with relief, looked up at Solly then grabbed the bottle and emptied it in one go. They watched the light go out of his eyes as his chest heaved one final time and he was still.
"Thank you," the medic said. "I couldn't leave him, but I couldn't help him either."
Solly helped him to his feet. "I don't reckon there's anyone else here we can do anything for."
"I told everyone who could walk to get onto the subway. That's where the rescue services will come in, I think."
"If they're coming at all."
The medic stopped for a moment. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"There was bad stuff going down before that plane crashed. First, Annabel Lee, then her husband. I saw others just drop on the street. Then the plane went down. I don't reckon we can look for any help for a while."
"I was just going on shift," the medic said. "Guess I'm going to be a little late. Marek's the name."
"Solly."
They shook hands, and both headed toward the brightly lit platform. A train stood there with its doors wide open. Every inch was occupied as the survivors of the inferno, and the puzzled commuters who'd happened to be on the train as it stopped at this station, crammed on board and waited to be taken away from the scene of devastation.
Solly hesitated before following the medic onto the train. His mind was reeling from the events of an hour during which his world had turned inside out. Suddenly, with razor-sharp clarity, his mind latched onto the fact that he was trapped below ground.
His only option seemed to be to get on the waiting train knowing that he was putting his life in the hands of someone who could drop dead in an instant—just like the pilot of that plane. And the co-pilot. Good grief, what was going on?
As he stood, facing outwards, the doors began to close with the finality of a coffin lid sliding shut. Panic gripped him, and he leaped back onto the platform as the train was sealed. He watched Marek the medic banging on the inside of the door as it began to move slowly along the platform.
Now what? He cast around for another way out and saw a door, dimly lit in the corner of the wall containing the train tunnel. He ran toward it, ignoring the chasing footsteps of other stranded passengers following his lead.
Maintenance Personnel Only. He ignored the sign and pushed the bar to open the door. Amber emergency lights illuminated a long and narrow tunnel.
"Where d'you think it goes?"
Solly whipped around to find himself surrounded by a dozen or so frightened people. The clothes of the woman who'd spoken were still smoking. Behind her, the train accelerated as it slid along.
"I don't know," he said, "but I'm not staying in here."
Another voice piped up, "There'll be another one along soon enough. Safer to wait."
"Suit yourself," Solly said. All he cared about was getting back to the surface and out of this tomb-like subway.
"See, it's coming in now!"
They all turned back to the platform as a warm wind played over their faces.
"Something's wrong," one of the commuters said. "Sounds like it's coming in too fast. Can't hear the brakes."
"Quick, get inside!" Solly roared. The first woman, the one with the smoking coat, moved instantly, but the others hesitated. "Come on!"
Glancing back at the platform he was just in time to see the blur of a train emerging at full speed out of the tunnel, its front end disappearing almost instantly from his line of sight. He pulled his nearest neighbor into the service shaft and grabbed the handle but had only pulled the door half closed when, with a sound like a fist connecting with a pane of glass, a white flash of heat pushed it shut and hurled him backwards to sprawl on the floor.
The cries of shock died away almost instantly. Solly scrambled to his feet. No one suggested he open the door again. No one wanted to see what was on the other side.
Solly took a quick head count. Eight souls survived. He felt a pang of sorrow for Marek. He hadn't deserved to die. There hadn't been time to convince him to get off and if Solly had tried, they'd both now be dead. True enough, but it didn't lessen the guilt he felt.
"Come on," he said to the woman with the smoking clothes. "Let's see if this leads anywhere useful."
"Okay. I'm Mona, by the way." She was a short woman of late middle age with olive skin and hair streaked with gray.
"Solly." It seemed utterly bizarre to be observing social niceties when civilization was crumbling around them, but it was somehow comforting. Perhaps when everything's going to pot, the little rituals of normal life are all you have to cling onto.
He led them along the passageway. It was obviously intended to allow maintenance crews to service the main tunnel, though he had no intention of trying to get out that way. Solly was hopeful, however, that it would also have access to the surface, so they trudged along with only the sounds of their feet on the slippery floor and half-imagined scurrying sounds to accompany them.
"Ah!"
Solly swung around to see a man drop to the floor. Even down here, death was stalking them. He pushed past the others and knelt down. The man, who was large, gray haired and of oriental appearance, lay with his hand over his chest, staring at nothing. On his wrist, his BonesWare flashed red as a message scrolled across it: Cardiac failure. Seek immediate medical assistance.
There was no assistance here.
Dropping to the floor beside the body, Solly felt around the man's stubbly neck for a pulse. Nothing. He began compressions while Mona knelt beside him, opened the man's mouth, and blew into his lungs.
His chest rose and fell, but only in time with Mona's breaths.
Solly sat up between compressions and glanced at the BonesWare monitor. The display had gone black.
Mona began to weep quietly.
Solly sighed as he got to his feet and helped her up. " I'm sorry. I don't mean to be callous, but we've got to get out of here or we're no use to anyone. I don't know about you, but I want to call home, see how my kids are."
She nodded. "But what killed him? Are we all waiting just to drop down dead?"
"I'm not waiting for anything," Solly responded, sounding more determined than he felt. But she had put into words something that had been scaring Solly since the car crash. People were dying. Lots of people. One minute they were walking along, the next they were gone. How was the Grim Reaper deciding who to take and how was he doing it? Solly glanced down at his own BonesWare. It featured its usual warning about his blood pressure, but otherwise looked completely normal. Would it be his turn next?
About a hundred yards along he found a vertical ladder that disappeared into the darkness above.
"Solly," Mona said as he grabbed hold of the ladder. "What's going on? All those people back there, that poor man. The train crash. The airplane?"
Solly turned to her and gave a sad shrug. "I don't know. Something big is going down, but all I care about right now is getting out of here and back onto the street." And then what? To the apartment he'd called home for the past eighteen months. The pure adrenaline of the past hour or so had cleared his mind of the alcohol he'd downed at Gabe's. Good grief, it felt like a lifetime ago. Now, however, he could feel exhaustion creeping back into his muscles and mind. He needed to get back. He needed to call Bella.
He gave Mona a brief smile and began climbing the ladder. As he went, he felt the vibrations of others following him. No one wanted to be trapped in the subway. Whatever awaited them up-top, it would be good to feel fresh air on his face.
He heaved the man-hole cover to one side and pulled himself up the last few feet until he was kneeling on t
he slush-covered sidewalk.
They'd emerged beside an intersection. It was now past 1 a.m., but cars were crawling along, ignoring the traffic lights. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that several vehicles had been abandoned and he knew that whatever had happened around Gabe's and in the subway was killing people here also. His tired eyes focused on the sign—Ditmars Boulevard. He thought for a moment, cursing the fact that he'd traveled everywhere by taxi since he arrived here. Ditmars. Yes, that was it. By sheer good fortune he wasn't far from home.
He helped the others out of the service tunnel. Some of them thanked him, others simply ran off into the darkness, as desperate as he was to get home and find out what was happening.
Mona was the last to emerge.
"Where are we, Solly?"
"The intersection of Grand Central Parkway and Ditmars; La Guardia's right behind us," he said. "Look, can you get yourself home from here?"
She looked around, confused. "I live in Glendale. Is that near here?"
"Haven't got a clue."
"It's okay, I'll get a taxi," she said, glancing up and down the road.
Solly sighed. "Don't do that Mona. Look, you can come home with me if you like and I'll get you home in the morning."
The relief was obvious on her face. "Oh, thank you so much."
Marvelous. All he wanted was to get back to his apartment as quickly as possible and phone home. "Come on," he said, "we have to move fast."
They headed across the intersection as police sirens sounded in the distance.
Chapter 2
Solly jogged over the crossing and onto the overpass then paused, waiting for Mona to catch up with him. He drew long breaths into his aching lungs, still sore from inhaling smoke in the subway, and gazed out over Grand Central Parkway, watching the headlights of cars picking their way through the stranded vehicles. Not long now and the arteries of the city would clog. Again, he felt the tightness of claustrophobia he'd first experienced underground. Miles and miles of tarmac and concrete between him and the open countryside and every route to a fast escape was closing up.
The Long Night Box Set Page 2