Having coldly and severely dealt with the impending breech in security, the heavy lifeless bodies, in turn, were dragged up to the edge of the windy eighth floor, and sent plummeting to their unusual and unceremonious burial.
"Or would it sound better to congratulate you on your appointment as head of SPES-Corp?" Angus's words turned cold as he paused after his complimentary question. Experiencing an uncomfortable itch on his throat, that had instantly morphed into a terrible hot burn, he turned facing the Texan oil mogul. The well tanned man was clasping a small pocket knife with an open blade not two inches long. The hot fire-like burn to his throat was unexplainable. Then noticing the red oozing liquid, Angus tried with both hands to put pressure on the laceration to prevent or limit the heavy spurts or bright red blood.
"I'm Angus 2. Anne sends her apologies. Now about those recordings of the location of the island..."
Chapter 8 - Aftermath
"Hey you two!" I'm not sure if that was polite. Maybe I could have added 'please'.
"Whose there!? We're fully occupied here! Get a different class room!" The kids looked up from a knee-high mound of old history homework books that they had been pillaging and lining roughly stapled together blankets from the school sickbay. An old Scout manual on survival had become their most favourite bed-time story book as a candle wore itself down on boring evenings. Not the most attractive of sleeping bags, but practically tends to outweigh fashion when other kids aren't around. These kept enough cold out to almost sleep right through the night. Filling two pillowcases with crumpled up pages from the math shelves, proved quite a luxurious item compared before they manage to wack the lock clean off the tuck shop and found two thick rolls bubble-wrap. The first month pirating the school tuck shop acted an awesome distractions away from the cold reality of suddenly having to fend for themselves. They quick enough realised that two handfuls of fudge and and potato crisps washed down with long life milk, was living the high life if you didn't mind it for breakfast. And lunch. And supper. Then one afternoon while climbing out a broken window of the bakery and back home, or rather, back to school, they were informed by a colony of rats, that the tuck shop's Holiday-Inn was under new management and the new tenants indeed agreed with the kids on the outranking of a course of sweet meals over vegetables and having to brush teeth. There were literally hundreds, if not thousands of tiny pairs of black eyes eyes which stared up in bewilderment as the brother and sister team rushed in and screeched to a halt halfway onto the cement floor of the tucks hop. The door had been slammed closed in utter horror, and remained closed since then. It wasn't any of kids' business how long the feasting rodents still had to deplete the well stocked room, or whether that heavy door the kids had slammed hard into its frame, ensured that the rats were eventually forced to dine on one another. That door stayed closed, and that was the end of that. So back to scouting empty shops it was. Surprisingly all outlets but the pharmacy had been raided bare. Only because there were two properly armed policemen placed there and at the petrol station. Eventually when the fuel, candles, cigarettes and a low supply of tinned food, beer and wine were swapped to depletion, the policemen left that too. "The policemen had collected enough car- and torch batteries and ammunition to keep a tank going for months" - they overheard one of the adults say. The idea was apparently to create a rendezvous point where people could go listen if anything ever came over the radio. As what one was used to see in movies. There was always a loner who came to save the day, or some radio announcement that help was on its way. Not this time however. Someone who needed the two police cars in a hurry had shot the policemen one evening and made off with a two police vehicles' of the last groceries. That was about the same time as a generous portion of the town's rat infestation had caravanned through the door the kids had left ajar - and into the school tuck shop.
"No you won't find me by looking at those windows. I'm up here" Judging from the dimensions of their home - which before had housed a noisy class during normal hours - I thought the speaker was about eight foot up on the wall in between what passed as their beds.
"Where...?" Both frowned at each other, then let their eyes slowly scale the vividly overused blue and yellow watercolour art and skewly crayoned selfies from months gone by - all neatly stapled onto the seven-meter wide cork board - worried that something or someone had spidermanned up onto the ceiling and sat there quietly, stuck to it all along.
"It's OK, look up at the speaker" I really didn't want to frighten them, it's not my style. I figured drawing their attention to the hidden security camera on the opposite side of the room could be left for later. I wonder if the teacher knew someone had secretly been spying on her.
"Who are you and how can you see us? Can you see us?" It was his sister.
"If you can keep a secret. But I don't know if I can trust you to tell you" That's the best I could come up with - without scaring the daylights out of them. And yes, Olaf taught me well. Obviously I needed to win them over before I could put them to work.
"Excuse me? How do you know? How about we don't know the first thing about you either?" Yes I believe that's what a big sister would do. I liked her instantly and wanted her to like me too. Her age, I guessed, would be a good start. I didn't want to come across as an adult and reward them with false hope, nor as a younger child that they could boss around. After all this was 'my' survival at stake, as much as theirs.
"OK let's do this, I'll give you both clues to follow, to improve your situation, and safety, and when you're ready, you can help me. Does that sound like something you would be interested in?" I had a few backups, but those were not necessary.
"OK. What do you want in return, and when? We don't want trouble - I'll have you know?" Her little brother was a future negotiator, I decided it that right there. I always read from online books which projected a post-apocalyptic world, that the urge of certain animal species would be satisfied, to reclaim the hills and valleys where there ancestors once roamed. I would have guessed viruses, rats, and pigs to be honest. Rats are used to hide and will feed off whatever doesn't eat them first. Viruses let out of the government laboratories globally by Motley, enjoyed their new found freedom. I'm sure not being bossed around, and confined to the frozen climate that Pelindaba offered on sub-level three, was really all they ever wanted. It's too late now anyway to judge the wisdom of storing two-thousand-and-more-year old viruses from both Arctic caps, to test for backup plan in a future of the melting ice masses as had been both predicted and heavily ridiculed. Thad had been Motley's doing I'm sure, for overpopulation - in addition to the irreversible consequences of the misunderstandings between the east and west, eventually evolving into a utter catastrophic nuclear war. That Motley operated with virus-like persistent perseverance, didn't take away its brilliance in capitalising on the case-scenarios it anticipated of giving humans nuclear chips to out-play and out-bluff each other in the Poker game of greed, self defence and lastly, survival. The combined group of pigs on the three farms and the slaughtering facility, stood at one million on the night chosen for the Korea missile. It had, unlike the rest of the affected world, dug itself deep into the earth's crust and just sat there... waiting. Between viruses, rats and pigs - all three, left to their own devices, would become as wild and savage as nature intended programming them, I believe. But once again, recording the recurring and increased howling in the suburns and the old business district, as a brighter moon phase was approaching at night while the hopeless humans rested - it seems I excluded the most likely candidate that had been battling out its presence in hiding in the hills. From the fifty or or security cameras; fitted just between the primary school and the coal storage yards of the mothballed power-station, and pulling their life fluid from the handful of solar panels, I counted at least eighty wolves tonight. I'm unable to figure out what draws them away from the hills and gravitates to midtown lately. Like before, at four o'clock; two hours before sunrise, the clanging noise will chase them away, but personally, I'm sure it
's the sunlight. Of the three hundred and eleven humans who survived the cloud of nuclear radiation, which seems to have been swept out of sea somewhere, for now at least, I suggested a sixty-strong group with large alliminium cooking pots, and metal ladles - banging these peculiar drums non-stop for the kilometer stretch of broken fence between the school and ruins of town on the eastern side of the M22's highway, and the park and hospital on the western side of the highway. I thought the humans could do with some sunlight in the the morning for an hour or two, between the school and factories which had become a large a residency, the park for the adults to meet and plan, and the hospital to redeem skin-burns from the remaining lingering previous nuclear fallout, and the understaffed facility's attention to minor ailments. I don't want to suggest too many things just yet. I'd hate for them to hope that help from outside is on its way. Let's face it - it's not. They're going to have to dig themselves out of this one. On the other hand, if they find out who I am, they're sure to ignore me, and that is not going to help them... nor, me. So, as if it's pure luck, a message a day on the hospital reception computer. I got them used to communicate in these old luminous green DOS one-liners again. Sound and image would have given the game away. I wouldn't want that. If Motley is still around, I'd hate for him to find me. For now, for the humans, there is no alternative electronic contact with the outside world. Ok, I lie, but it's for the better. I've seen them in action. It's better to manage them in protective camps like these around the world. It's for their their own good, for now.
Chapter 9 - The Librarian
Everyone, or so one would hope, have met, or at least have been hushed by the pointed - and sometimes slightly crooked - warning finger of a librarian. Maybe even while giggling or sneezing just a little too loudly, while on a purposeful cruise down those dusty isles where ideas disquietly gather and wait, sometimes for hundreds of years. But sometimes, those ideas are suspended in forgotten worlds, where even 'Time' neglects to visit and share a gossip about the smell of faded old jackets, or a brief brushing flirt with knowledge - of other similar places. Whether during our schooling phase's steady development and fondness of books, or our later laborious research in busy public- or university libraries, we may have unknowingly brushed past librarians who were not quite what they seemed. Central to published ideas being signed in and out, and have caringly and correctly stored these, for as long as we've had the healthy need to learn, compare, debunk or accept authoritative ideas about our fascinating but sometimes cruel world - or, if ever we needed to evoke dusty buried thoughts of long-forgotten pioneers who framed our perceived reality - or the destroyers who helped them write history...
"It's fine, I'll be right here. Just follow the script on screen, and don't start a conversion..."
"This one?"
"Correct. When the phone's picked up, start with your name".
... ... ...
"John Crimson? Tell me son, is that your real name?"
"D.. Definitely not sir".
"So who are you? Do you have a rank or force number?"
"Protocol requires only that I make this p... phone-call to you sir. Not supply my real name or a rank or force number, if indeed I had any... sir".
"Your accent, it's not American?"
"Indeed, it is not sir"
"Outsourcing, for security reasons, have taken on a whole new meaning, hasn't it son?"
"One could say so sir, I would imagine that would be a very brief, no-bells-and-whistles s... summary of how the intelligence world has changed... sir"
"So who keeps record of what I'm authorising, and the result? How'd I know if a mission was successful? "
"You will still be president sir".
"Excuse me?"
"The world will still carry on as usual, and you will still head the will of capitalism, sir".
"You're a cynical bugger aren't you?"
"I know what I'm dealing with sir, and if I wasn't any good at it, someone else would have made this phone-call to you sir..."
"And...?"
"Of course if things don't go as planned, you wouldn't be president anyone sir"
"Hell, but you are full of..."
"Would there be anything else sir?"
"I was still talking there, you know... Anyway, and the records?"
"No one knows sir. To be honest 'I' don't even know were the records are kept, other than, the word "off-site" have been whispered in some passages as far back as we know."
"We've met, haven't we?"
"Indeed we have, yes sir".
"And, what is it that you want from me?"
"Permission for storage can only be signed-off by your desk sir. That would be the reason for my call and obviously to congratulate you. It's marked only with the metaphor for the facility... 'Anne'... to your left. It's the cream coloured envelope on your desk between the telephone and the framed picture of your last trip to Scotland... sir".
"Am I being watched right now?"
"You are sir".
"I see... Who's Anne, obviously... a woman?"
"Anne? Not in 'this type' of macho-male dominated world... definitely not a real person, and by no means a woman sir. No, I highly doubt that it's an actual person sir."
"So tell me, what is ZC-G556? There is a red rubbers stamp 'Sam' underneath it?"
"Sir, what I 'can' tell you, is that's in Malta".
"OK".
"We'll make arrangements. Thank you and good night Mr. President."
"And the paperwork"
"No sir?"
"No?"
"Other than you authorise... err... we don't have to file paperwork for something which never happened sir. That would be a waste of paper sir.
"Yes, I've been briefed..."
"Welcome again sir and congratulations on the election".
"Thank you".
"It really was a great victory for the nation sir. We'll meet in a week".
"Will we ever... when we meet, will I know it's you?"
"No sir. Nothing would give me greater pleasure. But no sir, I wouldn't be sitting on any meetings, but the one on the military budget"
"So then, when we will meet, I'll know who you are..."
"No sir, unfortunately you won't".
"I see".
"I'm delighted that your predecessor filled you in, as this is a matter which is carried over from the previous administration... if I may be so bold."
"We'll talk again I assume?"
"I would imagine so. Thank you sir".
... ... ...
"How was that?"
"Just perfect. Now let's phone the rest".
Anne knew that libraries were never designed 'only' to keep up with the latest modified Israeli grappling Krav-Mega twists or snapping of an attacker's unsuspecting wrist - in an attempt to incapacitate him. Nor was it 'only' the ancients' attempt to show people two thousand years into an unknown future, of who they had worshipped and how to correctly fashion a protective castle wall or sturdy sailing ship that could take advantage of the lightest ocean breeze - and disappear over the daring beckoning horizon.
Somehow, sometimes., it was just a romantic who wanted to hide the truth amongst old yellow pages, by telling elaborate stories of a despaired world. Like how much better a lusciously ripe strawberry tasted, when shared after a first kiss. Or how the sweetest red apple ever, was the one plucked but never tasted, and shared with a 'special someone' - or... how much 'more' purpose life seem to favour a couple in love, as life pour hope over them right before they would borrow the map to navigate the maize of happiness, grief, loss and back to real love again - when the mountains were still hills. Just an innocent soul, wanting to hide between inked pages, for a few thousand years or so, to later come alive and exaggerate insignificance by downplaying a dark world that lost hope.
"... happy birthday Aunty Anne... happy birthday to you...!?"
"Thank you all! Now I must think of a name for my choir... Thank you again, it really means the world to me. And I really
didn't want you to go to any trouble. Thank you, Simon, thank you, Jenny, Miranda, Gertrude, Jonathan, and you Mary. Thank you kids for making my day special. Well Mary, your mom was kind enough to bake the muffins, Simon, and yours for the Apple tart, and Jonathan, remember to give mom this envelope. It's a thank you note for the lovely ginger beer she sent with you for today". Anne lied, but wasn't going to embarrass him by sending his mom money for groceries.
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