Z. Apocalypse

by Steve Cole

  Silently, Keera flapped away without a backward look, to land with a crump and clatter of folding wings a few metres from where Adam, Zoe and Eve cowered together. She sat, heaving for breath, her eyes dark and unfathomable. And while Oldman and Mr Adlar backed away in frightened wonder, Zoe pushed herself through the snow towards her.

  ‘Zoe, no!’ Eve shouted.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Zoe insisted. ‘She’s different, but . . . she doesn’t want to hurt us. I know it.’ She pulled off her mitts and pressed her thick-fingered hands against the pterosaur’s scaly flank. She made soft cooing noises, which Keera seemed to echo, almost lost beneath the wind’s breath.

  Adam retreated to his dad, pressed himself up against him for comfort. But Oldman, it seemed, was more concerned with the downed plane, which lay half-hidden by the billowing curtain of smoke. ‘I need to check that wreck for survivors,’ he announced. ‘We need Geneflow staff alive for prosecution. If the flames spread from our plane, no one inside will stand a chance.’

  ‘But it could explode at any moment,’ Eve protested. ‘You’re the one who told us that if there were any wiring sparks near the fuel tanks—’

  ‘Do as I say, not as I do. And stay well back.’ Oldman trudged past Zoe and Keera, making for the half-buried plane.

  ‘She didn’t come here for revenge,’ Zoe said distantly. ‘Didn’t even come to help us.’ She turned to Adam. ‘She came because we made her free – and the only way to be sure she can stay free . . .’

  ‘Is to kill Josephs,’ Adam concluded.

  Zoe nodded slowly, pressed her head against Keera’s side. ‘I think . . . after all she’s gone through . . . she just needs to be sure.’

  Adam nodded too, a mess of emotions. ‘I think we all do.’ Why should he be surprised by Keera’s savagery? Hunger, pain, the hunt, the kill . . . like Zed, she might know plenty more, but he supposed these were the only things she really understood.

  Eve watched Oldman draw closer to the Geneflow plane wreckage. ‘I guess he needs Geneflow personnel as witnesses if he’s going to put the world straight.’

  ‘Or if he wants to put them to work for the US military,’ said Mr Adlar cynically.

  But then a series of clangs – something bone-hard striking metal – stopped Oldman in his tracks. Adam looked nervously at his dad. The clangs were followed by a sharp rending scrape.

  Then Oldman jumped backwards and slipped, yelling out in surprise as a gargantuan, scaly hulk leaped out through the smoke and thumped down in front of the plane.

  ‘Zed!’ Stunned, Adam stared at his friend. ‘Zed, is it . . . are you . . .?’

  Zoe turned to him, her grin wide and full. ‘I knew he couldn’t be dead!’

  Adam couldn’t tear his eyes away. ‘I really thought this time we’d lost him . . .’

  But his delight was tempered by Zed’s condition. The beast was swaying on bloodied legs, his head and neck a mass of deep welts and bites. One eye was a swollen mess, but the other eye glinted bright in the flames. He was clutching a large, misshapen bundle in his arms, holding it to his chest like it was treasure. As the wind cleared the smoke further Adam realized Zed’s haul appeared to be half a dozen blood-soaked bodies.

  ‘Back,’ Zed said.

  ‘Oh, yes, you had our backs, all right . . .’ Adam charged towards his friend, tripping and tumbling across the snow.

  ‘No, Ad,’ his dad bellowed. ‘You heard Oldman, that wreck could go up any moment!’

  Adam couldn’t stop himself. He ran past Oldman, all the way up to Zed, and pressed himself against the animal’s warm, heaving flank. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Just . . . thanks. Without you . . .’

  ‘Back,’ Zed said again, his voice a splintered growl.

  Adam realized Zed might be warning him away. Looking up at Zed uncertainly, he retreated to join Oldman. ‘You . . . are all right, aren’t you?’

  Oldman was staring at the grisly bundle of bodies Zed was holding. ‘Those people. Are they alive?’

  ‘Others dead. These ones . . . live.’

  ‘So that was the scraping noise,’ Oldman mumbled. ‘Zed opened the plane like a tin of sardines and fished out the live ones.’

  ‘But look at them.’ Adam stared, repulsed but fascinated by the tough scales that patterned the bodies’ dark green skin.

  ‘This is what you meant by “hybrids”?’ Oldman murmured.

  Adam nodded. ‘Like the clone of my dad . . . and Zoe and me . . .’

  ‘I guess they all turned reptile ready to start their new world,’ said Oldman. ‘Prematurely, let’s hope.’

  Zed strode past them both, away from the plane wrecks, his badly mauled tail dragging through the snow. Adam and Oldman hurried after him as Zed dumped the grisly pile of victims in front of Keera and Zoe.

  Eve and Mr Adlar came over to see. A grotesque, powerful-looking creature, half woman, half reptile, was sprawled on top of the pile, both legs bloody and mangled, her breathing fast and shallow.

  Adam’s heart twisted as he recognized the distorted features. ‘Josephs.’

  Mr Adlar peered down at her, myopically. ‘What has she done to herself?’

  ‘Stage one of her grand design,’ said Adam. ‘She did that to you too.’

  A low, menacing noise started up somewhere in Keera’s chest, and Zoe tried to shush her. Zed sank to his haunches in the snow and watched as Oldman, Eve and Mr Adlar tried to separate the gruesome tangle of bodies, laying them out straight. Adam hunkered down beside Zed and tried rubbing snow into one of the deeper gashes in his scaly neck. But when the beast flinched and growled, Adam took the hint. Guess I’ll leave dino-first-aid to the experts.

  ‘Where . . .?’ Josephs stirred and coughed, staining her chin with blood. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘In your own back yard,’ snapped Mr Adlar. ‘The animal you created and tried to kill brought you down.’

  ‘No, where am I? Me . . . the me before . . .’ She brushed her fingers against her scaly cheek. ‘Before this?’

  Oldman glanced back at the wreck of the Geneflow plane. ‘If she was in there with you, she’s dead.’

  Josephs’ eyes closed, her breathing growing more erratic.

  ‘We’re going to need the mother of all first-aid kits,’ Eve muttered.

  Adam saw the red case lying on its side in the snow between them and the wreck. Since there was nothing he could do for Zed, he ran over, braving the fierce heat of the flames to retrieve it. How many times have I dreamed of Josephs lying beaten at last? Never looking like that, but even so . . . Adam had always imagined he’d feel awesomely triumphant. Instead, he found he felt nothing but a cold, weary relief.

  He set the first-aid box down beside Oldman, who tore it open. He grabbed a loaded syringe from the kit with bloody fingers and jabbed it into Josephs’ shoulder. ‘Now, come on, Samantha. I can fix you up. But you need to tell us about your accomplices. The other bases you got.’

  Josephs’ eyes flickered open as the drug went to work. She looked down at her crushed legs and groaned, shaking her head.

  ‘Not quite perfection, is it,’ Zoe hissed spitefully. ‘Prisoner of your own “unfortunate” body now. Doesn’t look like you made it quite tough enough.’

  Eve shook her head. ‘Don’t gloat, Zoe.’

  ‘You want me to feel sorry for her?’ Zoe looked stung. ‘Josephs deserves it! After all she’s done . . . the blood on her hands, she deserves to be dead.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Oldman unzipped Josephs’ coat to reveal a grisly open wound in her ribs. Adam felt sick but the colonel calmly tore a large field dressing from its wrapper and straightened the airtight material.

  Zed turned away, apparently uninterested, pressing his raw body into the soothing snow.

  ‘Come on, Josephs, breathe out for me.’ As she did so, Oldman placed the wrapper over the wound. ‘Eve, can you apply the dressing?’

  Keera made another chittering noise.

  ‘Let her die,’ Zoe whispered, as if translati
ng.

  ‘She’s got to live,’ said Oldman, ‘so she can be put on trial.’

  Mr Adlar nodded. ‘The whole world will hear the truth at last, straight from her mouth.’

  At the sound of Mr Adlar’s voice, Josephs’ dark eyes seemed to focus. ‘You . . . I guessed it would be you.’ She looked between him and Adam. ‘I’d already ordered evacuation when your planes were detected. Thought my creations would deal with you . . .’

  ‘We stopped them.’ Mr Adlar frowned. ‘Why were you evacuating? What brought down the city?’

  ‘Our atomic reactor . . . and you.’ Josephs started to shiver. ‘Your clone barricaded himself inside with the son I permitted him . . . Forced the reactor core into meltdown . . . The build-up of heat in the containment units produced a massive steam explosion deep underground, destroyed the whole base.’

  Oldman looked at Mr Adlar. ‘Making this whole area radioactive?’

  ‘The bedrock below us will have absorbed a lot of it,’ Eve volunteered. Mr Adlar nodded uncertainly.

  But Adam was jolted from his fears as Josephs looked up at him, eyes narrowed. ‘All this,’ she whispered. ‘Because of him.’

  ‘Me?’ Adam’s spine didn’t just tingle, it almost shook itself apart. You made Dad see what he’d become, his clone had said.

  Made him decide what he had to do about that.

  ‘Oh, Dad . . .’ Adam turned to his father. ‘I was trying to tell you, back on the plane – me and that clone of me, in the Think-Send world, we connected. He helped me bring down the dinosaurs, and he . . .’ Adam swallowed as fresh tears threatened to form. ‘He knew he was going to die. He – I – must’ve been so afraid, but still he helped us . . .’

  ‘Easy, Ad,’ his dad breathed.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Josephs moaned with pain as Eve tightened the bandage around her; already the thick white material was turning scarlet. ‘He’d been conditioned . . . He wanted what Geneflow wanted . . .’ She grimaced. ‘How could seeing Adam again break through that conditioning?’

  ‘You know so much, Sam,’ Mr Adlar said quietly, ‘but I doubt if you could ever understand that.’

  ‘I made another Adam . . . made him stronger, better than before . . .’ Her voice was dwindling to a croaking whisper. ‘The two of you could’ve lived together in a better world. A world that makes sense.’

  ‘Whatever you did to me in there . . . I’d never share your idea of what makes sense.’ Mr Adlar’s lip curled. ‘You look at us like we’re walking, talking sacks of chemicals, but we’re not. We’re people. We’re put here by chance, we’re shaped by happenstance, we blunder through life the best way we can. It’s not the design that makes us better – it’s that journey.’

  ‘Sentimental bull . . .’ Josephs sneered, a trickle of blood escaping her lips.

  ‘You call that bull?’ Eve shook her head as she applied a further dressing to the gory chest wound. ‘You’re insane.’

  Josephs coughed, and blood dribbled from her mouth. ‘What’s insane . . . is to sacrifice yourself . . . for a world that’s already on the scrap heap.’

  ‘All right enough,’ said Oldman impatiently, wrapping a foil blanket around the hybrid’s broken body. ‘Josephs, I need to know more on your accomplices, your methods, the scientists you kidnapped . . .’

  But then a whooshing roar of engines thundered overhead. Adam glanced up to see what looked like three pencil-leads sketching vapour trails across the sky. Zed stirred uneasily, and Keera bucked and screeched, almost knocking Zoe over.

  ‘Fighter jets.’ Oldman saw Josephs close her eyes and shook her awake. ‘Hear that? The Russian military’s on its way. But I can protect you, see that you get a fair trial, if you only—’

  ‘You can’t judge me . . .’ She shook her head, dark eyes shining. ‘You just better hope . . . my clones . . . don’t come looking . . .’

  ‘They’re dead,’ said Adam. ‘They’ve got to be.’

  Josephs opened her mouth as if to say something more. But only thick, glottal noises came out as her breath bubbled in the back of her throat. Her eyes began to flicker shut.

  The MiGs swept back in ear-splitting formation overhead.

  ‘Ground forces will be here soon,’ Oldman muttered. ‘Josephs! Josephs, stay with me!’

  But she was unconscious now, breathing shallowly. Though her features were alien and unsettling, she looked weirdly peaceful.

  ‘I . . . guess it’s a good thing we’ll be picked up soon,’ Eve said, looking up at the trails in the sky. ‘We won’t last long in these conditions, and with the risk of radiation . . .’

  Adam nodded, turned to the mountain of rubble that marked the Geneflow base like some chaotic gravestone, and wondered what trace remained of two lives deep beneath. A father and his boy who had never truly lived, but who might just have saved the world for untold billions who would.

  Then he went to his dad and hugged him close. He saw that Zed, despite his battlescars, was watching the skies intently. But for Adam, right now in this desolate backwater, the Russian troops weren’t the enemy – they were the cavalry.

  ‘We’re losing Josephs,’ Oldman said bitterly. ‘All that she knows . . . it’ll die with her.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Zoe. ‘I don’t know who those other survivors are, but that man there is called Thierry.’

  Adam looked over to find her pointing to a balding hybrid with a wispy grey beard. ‘Yeah – he was Josephs’ right hand man. He’ll know everything about their plans.’

  Oldman inspected Thierry, feeling for a pulse. ‘I don’t know what’s normal for your average alligator man. But aside from this head wound he doesn’t seem too badly hurt.’

  ‘For Josephs, on the other hand . . .’ Mr Adlar looked down at the architect of a world that would never be, dead now in her own congealing blood. ‘It’s over.’

  For a few seconds, no one moved or spoke. Then suddenly, Keera jerked into life and shook out the vast, leathery sails of her wings. She was scarred and battered, but still so strong. As she stood there, the last of her kind, there was something about her that was almost majestic. She looked over at Adam, eyes bright but unreadable. Then she turned towards Zoe, and lowered her head a little.

  ‘She’s going,’ Zoe murmured.

  There was no parting cry, no hesitation, not even a backward glance; with Josephs dead, Keera’s hard-won freedom was hers to take. She took a few steps and launched herself into the sky.

  Goodbye, thought Adam, his mind full of all they had shared these last weeks.

  He saw that Zoe was crying; her mum came to comfort her. ‘It’s OK, love. She’ll be all right out there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zoe said quietly. ‘She will be, now.’

  Zed broke the peace first, growling suddenly as if in warning. Alerted, Oldman pointed up at some black specks in the sky. ‘Russian military helicopters incoming!’

  ‘Here we go then. Prisoners of war. This’ll be original.’ Eve looked up at Mr Adlar, and pressed her forehead against his chest. ‘Jeez, what a morning!’

  ‘You could say that.’ He put an arm around her. ‘Colonel Oldman, what do you think will happen? If the President is going to deny this mission took place . . .’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s proof that Geneflow was behind the whole scam all around us. And old Doc Marrs packs some punch at the UN – he’ll be pulling strings for us.’ He looked down at the unconscious Thierry. ‘No one can deny we came up with the goods today. The Russians won’t hurt us – they need to talk with us. And I’ve got plenty to say.’

  Yeah, thought Adam. But you can leave Zed right out of it. Adam crossed to join the battered dinosaur. Zed shifted a little as he approached, raised his head from the snow.

  ‘You’ve got to split,’ Adam told him. ‘There are more soldiers coming.’

  Zed stared at him with his one good eye, but said nothing.

  ‘They . . . they won’t hurt me,’ said Adam with something that at leas
t approached conviction, ‘but they might try to hurt you, or capture you or worse . . .’ He pressed his hand against Zed’s bleeding face. ‘So, you have to go.’

  Zed snorted softly. ‘Hurts.’

  ‘I know it does,’ Adam nodded. ‘It must. With all you’ve been through I don’t know how you’re still standing. But even if you just hide out round here for a bit, till you do your super-healing bit—’

  ‘Go. Hurts.’

  Adam took his hand away, feeling helpless. ‘Dad, is there anything in the first aid kit we could . . .’

  ‘Hey, Ad?’ Zoe called. ‘I . . . don’t think Zed means that kind of hurt.’

  ‘Oh.’ Adam watched as the creature slowly heaved himself up. ‘I . . . I get you, Zed.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But I don’t want anyone else to imprison you. You’re like Keera; you need to be free. And these soldiers . . . or Oldman even . . . they might try and use me to capture you.’

  ‘Not hurt . . . us,’ Zed snarled. ‘Never.’

  ‘We can’t always win, Zed. No one can.’ Adam felt cut-up inside. ‘You’ve got to promise me you’ll go now and never come back for me. Never.’ He looked up helplessly at the beast staring down at him. ‘Do you even know what a promise is?’

  Zed cocked his head as if quizzical. ‘Got . . . your back?’

  ‘Yeah . . . That was a promise.’ Adam tried to force a smile. ‘And you kept it, you helped to land our plane, saved our lives. Now it’s my turn to save yours – by making sure you go, and stay gone.’ He chewed his lip furiously to stop the tears. ‘Don’t you see? That’s the only way I’ll know for sure you’ll be OK – if you leave me and don’t ever come back.’

  The hum of the helicopters was growing larger, stealing into the blue expanse of the sky as if claiming ownership. The sound seemed to break whatever spell had held Zed motionless. Without another word, he turned and pounded unsteadily away.

  Then he leaped through the smoke still pouring from the blazing jet, the black pall stealing him from sight.

  Dimly, Adam felt fingers take his own; he saw that Eve had helped Zoe over to join him.