Mass Extinction Event (Book 11): Days 349 to 356

by Cross, Amy

  “I'm sorry, Dad,” I whisper, even though I know that he'd most likely not out there. “I'm going to be strong, I promise. I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I'm going to come up with a plan. I won't just sit around here at the lighthouse and wait to die, I promise. I'll figure something out.”

  I can't afford to lose my mind. I have to somehow stay focused. I can't give up. I won't give up. And when morning comes, I'll figure out a plan.

  Day 356

  Elizabeth

  I first notice the helicopter while I'm plucking a seagull for dinner.

  Looking out the window, across the sunlit grass, I see that another helicopter is coming toward the lighthouse. I instantly freeze, bird in hand, and watch the approaching menace. There's a part of me, a great part, that wants to turn and run, yet I stay perfectly still and I feel my heart starting to harden. Whereas last night I was able to easily convince myself that the helicopter and its inhabitants could not be real, this morning reality seems easier to distinguish. I shouldn't be hallucinating anything, not right now, which means that – on balance – the helicopter is most likely real.

  I set the dead bird down, making sure that it's positioned so that any blood from the neck runs into a bowl, then I wipe my hands and head over to the door. There I stop again, listening to the thud-thud-thud of the helicopter as it comes closer, and finally I hear the sound roaring in the sky before it starts to descend. I hear a faint thump of impact, and then the scraping of a door sliding open.

  And then footsteps.

  Somebody's coming. It'll be those soldiers, I guess, although part of me still holds out hope that my father might actually be here. Wendy was right about that, at least. Hope hurts so damn much.

  “Elizabeth?” a familiar voice calls out suddenly, accompanied by a gentle tap on the other side of the door. “Elizabeth, are you in there? It's me.”

  “Dad,” I whisper, still not quite daring to believe that this is really happening.

  “Elizabeth, please,” he continues, “I know you might be mad at me, but I can explain everything. Can you open the door?”

  I hesitate a moment longer, and then – with shaking hands – I reach out and turn the handle. I still can't quite bring myself to accept that Dad's here, but then I open the door and see his face and I feel a rush of relief as I realize that it's true.

  “Elizabeth,” he says, with tears in his eyes, before stepping forward and hugging me tight. “Thank God I found you again!”

  ***

  “Boston was like nothing I've ever experienced before,” he explains a short while later, as we sit at the dining room table. “It was chaos, it was every man for himself. I knew the fighting would be bad, but...”

  His voice trails off, and for the first time I see a flicker of genuine trauma in his eyes. He looks and sounds so much older, as if the past eight or nine months have aged him well beyond his years. His hair, which was always so neat before, is unkempt and long.

  “I sent you away because I didn't want you to experience any of that,” he continues finally. “I lied to you, and I'm sorry, but I'd do it again if the situation arose. I knew that even if I survived the battle in Boston, things would be difficult. I'm still having to be careful, to this day. I don't know where Charles Bloom went, or -”

  “Bloom's dead,” I tell him.

  “How do you know?”

  “I -”

  I freeze as I think back to the moment when I pulled the trigger and blew Bloom's head to pieces. I remember how it felt to watch him die, and I remember how I told myself that I was killing him in order to avenge Natalie's death. The truth is probably a lot more complicated, but I guess the important thing is that he's long gone.

  “I saw it happen,” I say cautiously. “Right in front of me. He's been dead for a long time.”

  “That's good news,” Dad says with a sigh. “There's also the question of Bill Patterson, he's not been -”

  “He's dead too.”

  “He is?”

  “Blown up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It was a pretty big explosion.”

  “Well,” he mutters, “this is starting to feel like Christmas.”

  “I found the tracker,” I tell him. “Only the other day, but I still found out. Why didn't you come and find me sooner?”

  “Believe me, I wanted to, but I had to move fast. It was only when I reached Philadelphia that I was able to access the systems that allowed me to search for your signal. Project Atherius still has some working satellites. I saw that you were in New York, and I made the decision to leave you there. I thought you'd be safe. I also didn't want to draw attention to you, since I was worried that Bloom or Patterson would be looking for you.” He pauses. “The next time I checked the signal, suddenly you were out here in Montauk, but by then I'd learned about New York. Somehow I already knew that you'd make it out of there. You're a survivor, Elizabeth.”

  I offer a weak smile, but honestly I don't feel like a survivor. I feel like someone who lucked into a lot of escapes. In fact, when I look back at everything that's happened, I can't quite believe that I've made it this far.

  “I understand why you didn't go with my team last night,” he continues. “I should have realized you'd be smart like that. So I came to see you personally, to tell you that you need to come to Philadelphia.”

  “What's it like there?” I ask.

  “It's safe.”

  “Like Boston was supposed to be safe?”

  “A lot has changed since Boston,” he explains. “Things are moving faster and faster, but the important thing is that we have our hands on the last remaining Project Atherius site. At least, I think it's the last. And that's crucial, Elizabeth, because the future of the entire human race now rests in our hands.”

  “What is Project Atherius?” I ask. “I've heard it mentioned so many times.”

  “Project Atherius has, at various points, been all things to all men. That was necessary, not only to get them to work for the greater good but also to hide the truth.” He pauses again. “I don't know if you're aware, but today is the three hundred and fifty-sixth day of this disaster. Project Atherius was always designed to be activated precisely one year into the end of the world, and that's how it's going to be. Elizabeth, we only have nine days left to save everything.”

  “Dad...”

  “It's too complicated to explain right now,” he adds. “In all honesty, I wouldn't know where to start, but you just have to trust me. A lot of very smart people have been preparing for this moment, and they've given us hope. Not a lot, but enough to keep us going.”

  “Dad, I think I'd rather just -”

  “This is it, Elizabeth,” he continues. “The fighting in Boston, the bombing of New York, all the other things that have happened that you probably don't even know about, it was all a power play between people trying to gain access to Project Atherius. There have been times when things have looked bleak, but I refused to give up. I had some inside knowledge, and I rode my luck a little, and somehow it's all come together. That doesn't mean we're safe now, but it means we have a shot – one final shot – at getting this right. But the thing is, none of that will actually matter if you're not there with me. It should have been you and Henry, that was my hope at the start, but at least you're still here. That's something.”

  Looking past him, I see the soldiers waiting near the helicopter. At the same time, in my mind's eye I can't help thinking back to the horrors of Boston.

  “Natalie died,” I say, and now my voice is trembling.

  “Who?”

  I turn to him.

  “Natalie.”

  “I don't remember a Natalie.”

  “She was my friend.”

  “I don't remember half the people I've met. I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but you need to focus on what's -”

  “Diane Clark died too.”

  He pauses, and then he nods sadly.

  “New York collapsed on top of me,” I con
tinue.

  “I know, and when we get to -”

  “Listen!” I say firmly, interrupting him. “I was down in that subway for days. I ate rats, and they tried to eat me. There were zombies. It was dark. Somehow I made it out, and then -”

  “Let's talk in the helicopter, on the way back to -”

  “And then I had to walk here,” I continue, cutting him off again, “and I only have one foot, but I made it.”

  “I know, and -”

  “Then some lunatics showed up on a boat, and this woman tried to poison me.”

  “Huh?”

  “It's a long story,” I tell him, “but the point is, somehow I made it out here. And apart from the past few days with the Longfords, I've actually managed to survive. I thought that staying here meant giving up, but now I'm starting to realize that it's a way of keeping going.”

  “Elizabeth -”

  “I can survive here,” I add. “When the seagulls run out, I'll find something else to eat. If a few stray zombies show up, I'll deal with them. This lighthouse is my home now, and when the boat sank I think that was the universe's way of telling me that I've done enough running and enough fighting. It's time to stop and try to build a life.”

  “Elizabeth,” he says cautiously, “I can tell that you've been through a lot, but the fight isn't over.”

  “It is for me.”

  “Elizabeth, we can talk more when we're in the air, but right now I need you to come with me.”

  I stare at him for a moment, but I know what he wants. He wants me to go back to the madness, to the chaos, to the fury of human civilization's desperate attempt to survive. To the monsters and the zombies. And even though I know that maybe he's right, that maybe there's something worth fighting for, I know deep down that for me those days are over. So that's why, after a few more seconds, I utter one simple word.

  “No.”

  Elizabeth

  “Are you okay?”

  Leaning over the sink, I stare down at the plughole for a moment longer before turning and seeing that one of the soldiers is watching from the doorway.

  “Alex Sims,” he continues. “I was the angry, loud guy banging on the door last night.”

  I pause for a moment, before nodding.

  “So your father came out a few minutes ago,” he says, “and he seems pretty pissed off. He told us we're going to be sticking around for a little while.”

  “Did he send you in to talk to me?”

  “No.”

  “You should all save yourselves some bother,” I tell him, “and head back to Philadelphia now. I'm not coming.”

  “I can't say I blame you.”

  “What's it like there?”

  “In Philly?” He hesitates, and from his expression it's already clear that things aren't good. “I'm not going to lie to you,” he continues. “We're not really based in the city itself. The Atherius site is a little way out. The city is a nightmare. There's this group of people there, they pretty much run the place, it's descending into anarchy real fast. I swear, until all of this happened, I never truly understood how low the human race could sink. Now I've seen things that make me wonder whether...”

  His voice trails off for a moment.

  “I saw a woman eating her own baby,” he adds finally. “It was dead. I don't know if she'd killed it, or if it had died some other way, but she was sitting by the side of the road and she was using her nails to tear off pieces of skin from its face. When she noticed me watching her, she screamed something and turned away, and then she carried on eating. At first I thought she was ashamed, that she didn't want to be seen, but then I realized the truth. She was worried that I'd take the corpse from her and eat it myself. That was a while ago now, but I still can't forget the look of madness in her eyes. Somewhere deep inside, that woman was screaming at herself to stop.”

  “She must have completely lost her mind,” I point out.

  “And then some.” He sighs. “That's just one story, there are loads more. I was in Boston, I was one of the few who made it out with your father. Philly's different, there's no actual pitched fighting, it's more a kind of pit filled with the absolute worst of humanity.”

  “You're really selling it to me.”

  He smiles.

  “I'm staying here,” I tell him.

  “I can understand that choice.”

  “I'm going to live here in this lighthouse,” I continue. “I'm going to learn to fish, and I'm going to learn to attract the seagulls better, and I'm going to get better at figuring out which berries I can eat. I'm going to patch the place up, too. There are a million jobs to be done around here, and I'm going to do them. There's enough here to keep me busy for the rest of my life, and that's fine. And if I screw up and it all goes wrong? That's fine too, because I'd rather die like that than screaming in the middle of some war-zone, or being chewed up by zombies. I don't have the death drive just yet.”

  “The what?”

  “It's something someone told me about a while ago.”

  “Huh.” He pauses for a moment, still staring at me. “I hope you don't mind me saying this,” he continues finally, “but you might just be the most sane person I've met in the past six months.”

  I can't help smiling.

  “I mean it,” he adds.

  I laugh, and then I realize I can't stop. I turn away, embarrassed, but my whole body is shaking and suddenly my knees feel weak, and I carry on laughing even as I slide down onto the floor. I hear footsteps hurrying toward me, and a hand on my shoulder, and I'm still goddamn laughing even as I push the hand away.

  “It's okay,” Alex says. “Let it out.”

  “I'm fine,” I sob, still laughing even as tears run down my face. “I just don't want to go back out there! I'm done with the world, okay? Let them fight. Let them blow each other up, I don't care anymore. I just want to be here!”

  “Elizabeth...”

  “I want to be left alone!”

  “There's no harm in -”

  “Leave me alone!” I scream, turning to him as the laughter finally ends.

  He stares at me, and it's clear that he's shocked.

  “Dad thinks he's going to persuade me,” I continue, “but he's not. I'd rather die than go back to the rest of the world. New York. Boston. New York again. I've seen enough. This is my little patch of land now, and I'll make it work or I'll die trying, but that's my decision and I'm never, ever going to change my mind.”

  “I believe you,” he replies. “I even envy you a little.”

  “So why are you still fighting?”

  “I guess I don't see any other way,” he explains. “I've been a soldier for most of my life, I don't know any other way to respond to something like this. Your father says that Project Atherius is humanity's last and only hope, and I believe him. Maybe I'm too trusting of authority, but with the way things are right now, it feels good to get told what to do by someone who seems to have a clue. I guess that's why I'm just going to keep going until...”

  His voice trails off.

  “Well,” he adds with a nervous smile, “until something stops me.”

  “Until you get killed,” I reply.

  “Well, obviously.” He rolls his eyes. “You didn't need to say that part, it was kinda implied.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No biggie.” He sighs. “Your father's been talking about fetching you for a while now. He was pretty mad at us last night when we returned without you, but at least he understood. This time, I think he might take a lot more persuading.”

  “He's not going to have much choice.”

  “If you tell him what you just told me,” he replies, “I think you might just get through to him.”

  ***

  “Did you sink this boat?”

  Stopping next to Dad on the shore, I look out at the Longfords' boat. It's on its side now, and frankly I find it quite hard to believe that just twenty-four hours ago I was on that thing, trying to drive it away.

&nbs
p; “Cut me some slack,” I say cautiously. “It was my first try. I think it's fair to say that I didn't do very well.”

  “At least you gave it a shot.”

  “There is that.”

  We stand in silence for a moment, watching sunlight glittering on the water. I feel as if Dad already knows what I'm going to say to him, but that's not much help. I'm still going to have to actually say it.

  “I'm not coming with you,” I tell him finally.

  “Is that right?”

  “You might not agree,” I continue. “You might be pissed off. You might be furious. But I've made my decision. For me, the running stops here and it stops now. Right or wrong, I'm putting my flag in the ground and making my stand.”

  “You are?”

  “I am.”

  “That's a ridiculous idea.”

  “Yeah, well, it's my ridiculous idea. And, frankly, it doesn't seem any more ridiculous than going back to the chaos of yet another post-apocalyptic city.”

  We stand in silence again.

  “Mid-apocalyptic,” Dad says suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I think it's mid-apocalyptic, rather than post-apocalyptic. Post-apocalyptic would imply that we're done with the apocalypse part, when really we aren't.”

  “Fine, whatever. The point is, I'm staying put.”

  “You're stubborn, like -”

  “Don't say that,” I tell him. “Anyway, Mum wasn't stubborn, she was just right about a lot of stuff.”

  “Speaking of your mother,” he replies, “when we get to Philadelphia -”

  “Is she alive?”

  He hesitates, and I feel an uncomfortable mix of dread and hope in my heart. Even now, I can't get rid of the faint belief that somehow she's managed to survive.

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “Everything I told you before was...” He sighs. “Can we just get going, Elizabeth? We're wasting valuable time.”