Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1)

by Jae Hill

  Our cage was lifted and carried inside the adjacent building. The Reverend followed us inside, and then circled us like a buzzard, eying us hungrily.

  “I want to thank you for your…contribution…to our cause,” he said smugly.

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” I said angrily. “Even if those things still work, and even if you can think of setting them off, you’re still not going to get within a kilometer of the Republic’s borders before they call in a drop on you. You don’t have a chance,” I finished, proudly.

  “Oh, I have more than a chance,” the Reverend continued, “I have numbers on my side. I have nearly half a million in my army on this side of the Misery River. Half a million ready to die for their Lord. A few robot warriors aren’t going to stand a chance against them. They simply don’t have enough bullets, bombs, and missiles. We’ll push west and we’ll destroy everything we touch. And with your notebook, and the ancient weapons of death on our side, we’ll get within your largest cities and annihilate them. We shall smite everything so that the Lord sees fit to cleanse this world once and for all.”

  I looked at him closely. He had not borne the effects of the Plague as harshly. He spoke English, albeit with a strange accent. He was educated and intelligent. He knew that our digibooks connected to the Central Library.

  “You’re an exile,” I surmised.

  “And you’re astute,” he confirmed.

  Rebekah looked confused.

  “Forty-three years ago,” the Reverend stated, “I was cast out from the society of the Republic for publicly advocating that we didn’t need to undergo the surgery, and for believing it was an affront to God. I moved to the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains where I was taken in by a Zionist family. I slowly built up a following of loyalists. Over time, I found that the creatures that raided our communities—the zombies we were always led to fear—believed in the same God. I moved deeper into the South, blending my beliefs with those of the zombie hordes. They accepted me. Taught me to enjoy the taste of human flesh. Taught me to embrace my inner savage. And the word of the Lord confirms all of it.”

  “No,” Rebekah said sternly, “The Lord says to forgive and love and make the world a better place.”

  “Wrong,” he said to her. “I can show you hundreds of places in the Bible where he orders cities burned and people executed. The Bible says to take an eye for an eye, to punish crimes with death, and to be swift with judgment.”

  “It’s all how you read it,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied. “You have your way, we have ours.”

  “How are you a leader of these things?” I asked. “They’re hardly human anymore.”

  “Well first of all,” he answered, “I have the power of faith, which is sizeable. And then…well let’s just say that being almost dead like these folks doesn’t come without its side effects. I alleviate some of their pain…they are beholden to me for my generosity, and their minds are freed from one bit of torment.”

  I was about to press him on the issue, but I noticed that the rabble in the square outside hadn’t dispersed. The noise of their chanting and yelling had gotten louder, actually. It was drowning out our conversation.

  “What’s going on out there?” Rebekah asked the Reverend.

  He smiled.

  “Feeding time.”

  EXTRACTION

  From our cage, we could see as hundreds of people—normal people in settlers’ clothes and without the Plague scars—were led into the square. They were surrounded by the horde. A silence fell over the square for one brief second, until someone blew a ram’s horn and then all of the zombies descended upon the group. We couldn’t see the savagery from where we were, but the screams and shrieks of the people who were being eaten alive told us everything we needed to know. Half an hour later, nothing was left but bones and clothes. Some zombies even lapped up the pools of dark blood from the street.

  “You’re lying to them,” I sneered. “The Republic didn’t spread the Plague. It was the mindless adherence to a Space-God that sent our planet into shambles. We could have stopped the climate change and the refugees. And the conditions that allowed the Plague to persist.”

  “No, young one,” the Reverend smirked. “Check the deep annals of your archives and you’ll find that it was the very genetic engineering you pride yourselves on that caused the Great Plague. Before the Republic, in the time of the so-called “ancient” governments, scientists tried to figure out a way to exterminate the mosquitoes. The population was moving farther north into the Arctic as a result of the global climate shift, and the mosquitoes were spreading tropical diseases in those locations. The prevailing idea was to genetically engineer some mosquitoes that had less desirable characteristics. Non-functional biting mouth parts. Shorter life-spans. An inability to over-winter. The plan was to engineer trillions of defective mosquitoes to interbreed and destroy the gene pool, and within a few generations, they’d be obliterated. But the plan didn’t work.”

  He paused, dramatically, then continued, “No one expected that Plague could be carried in mosquitoes in the extreme cold of the North, but these defective engineered variants allowed Chikungunya to persist in their gut. That trait bred into the species as a whole. Coupled with the other environmental conditions, it was the perfect storm. The governments mandated that people take vaccines, but no one trusted them anymore. Your beloved science and your Republic—the descendants of those scientists—are responsible for the genocide of billions. I believe that they intentionally murdered billions to further their environmentalist agenda. Their reward for their evil and reckless actions is a life among the stars and immortality? No, I refuse to accept that. I will wreak God’s vengeance among them and justice will be served.”

  “I don’t even need to detonate the bombs in the cities,” the Reverend said proudly. “I can pollute the water and the air. I can send infiltrators to spread the Plague among your young and vulnerable. I can strike your factories and power grids. I can eliminate robot civilization on this planet forever and reclaim it for the glory of God.”

  “You can’t do it!” I cried out. “You’re going to kill millions of innocent people!”

  “Everyone has sinned,” he replied, “and no one is innocent. God can judge them when he meets them.”

  The Reverend left to attend to the bombs, with my digibook in his hand. Every three hours, the book required my thumbprint to wake up from sleep mode. He’d be back, and when he did, I had a plan.

  We were left in the room overlooking the square. Rebekah looked pale with fear. I cuddled up against her and held her tightly.

  “We’re going to die,” she moaned. “We’re going to be eaten alive.”

  “No,” I promised her. “I can get us out of here. I just need that digibook.”

  As we sat in the cage, I noticed that a young woman occasionally walked past the window that led to the balcony. It appeared she was circling us, but still keeping an eye on the square. She was clean, with no scars and smooth, waxy skin. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail. She moved like a ghost, gliding over the rubble and cracked concrete. Her face was emotionless.

  “Oh, shit,” I swore under my breath.

  “What is it?” Rebekah asked.

  “That girl,” I whispered. “She’s an enhanced form. She’s a robot.”

  “Wait: what?” Rebekah said, slightly raising her voice, then quieting down. “How is that possible? Why would she work with them?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered back. “But this just got a lot more scary.”

  Rebekah didn’t know how interconnected the adults were. Hell, I didn’t know myself until Semper and my Father had informed me a few weeks ago. If there was a robot working with the zombies, she could tell them everything about the Republic. Maybe she could even access the neural web. But then why would they need me?

  We lay there, silently holding each other, under watchful guard of two larger zombies. The Reverend came back int
o the room almost exactly three hours later.

  “It’s locked,” he complained. “How do you unlock it?”

  “With my fingerprint,” I added. “So you’d better treat us well or I won’t cooperate.”

  “I don’t need you alive to have your fingerprint, child,” he snarled, “So you’d better do as I say or I won’t…cooperate.”

  The blonde woman peered through the doorway, expressionless, but staring directly at the digibook.

  “Who is she?” I asked. “She’s got an enhanced form.”

  The Reverend snarled. “She’s an angel of God.”

  “How are you going to activate the bombs, anyway?” I asked angrily. “I doubt the devices needed to arm the bomb are even around anymore.”

  “Well, I can remotely detonate them using the satellites in orbit,” he said, “through the Central Library connection. Getting them into the center of the Capitol, New Vancouver, or Whistler just requires a bit of fanaticism and a willing pawn. Now, are you going to reactivate your notebook for me?”

  He handed it through the cage. I took it in my hands and tapped on the screen a few times. I didn’t offer it back to him.

  “Hand it over, now, or you get to watch as we eat…her,” he pointed to Rebekah.

  I handed it back to him. The screen flashed a simple message.

  EMERGENCY P.O.I.N.T BEACON ACTIVATED. PLEASE WAIT IN YOUR LOCATION FOR IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE.

  The strange blonde robot bolted away as fast as I’d ever seen someone run, as if she knew exactly what was going to happen next.

  The Reverend didn’t run through. He let out a bloodcurdling shriek that chilled me to my core. He kicked at the cage and smashed the digibook on the iron bars, shattering the glass on my face. He was a ball of pure rage as he ran out of the building.

  Less than two minutes later, I heard the sonic booms and smiled. There were about three dozen cracks as the warrior forms entered the atmosphere.

  They dropped immediately outside the building and began firing at the zombies that remained in the square. The shots only started attracting more and more zombies, who began rushing down the streets, climbing through the broken windows and leaping off buildings.

  The warrior forms were mowing down rows of monsters in the square. Two entered the building and saw us in the cage. They said nothing to each other, but clearly were communicating via the neural web. One ripped open our cage and grabbed Rebekah and I under each arm. The other warrior provided cover against the rapidly advancing zombies.

  Outside in the square, the warriors started using increasingly devastating weaponry. The small missiles and Gauss rifles had given way to fully automatic weapons and grenades. Tear gas was expended. The zombies were pushing them back toward the building we were in. The warriors kept up a steady rate of fire and the square was now littered with zombie corpses. The horde continued to attack unabated and soon, the warrior forms began switching back to the smaller weapons as they ran out of heavier ordinance.

  It was then, at their most vulnerable moment, that the hulks came out of nowhere, crashing through the debris of the square and leaping over the piles of dead bodies. They were impervious to the small caliber guns and non-lethal weapons for which the warriors still had ammo. One of the warrior forms was suddenly and brutally ripped into pieces. Then another. I was horrified. Our most elite soldiers couldn’t stop the rise of the horde, and the monsters just kept coming.

  A dropship entered the atmosphere with a large sonic boom and came right down on top of the position in front of the balcony. Several large cables with magnetic grapples came down and started plucking warriors up into the air. The dropship hovered, but it only had so many cables, and could only reel in a dozen warriors at a time. By the time the first warriors were aboard the ship and the cables were coming back down, the remaining troops on the ground were fully overrun, engaged in brutal hand-to-hand combat with the hulks and the swarms of smaller zombies still in the fray. The two warrior forms that were protecting us, including the one holding Rebekah and me, made a mad dash out of the building and leapt into the air. Their jump jets propelled them slightly upward until they connected with the retrieval hooks. We were all hauled into the cargo hold of the dropship. From our vantage point, we could see as the last two warrior forms on the ground were destroyed. The ship rocketed up and forward, away from the disaster on the ground below.

  There were only twenty-three warrior forms in the cargohold. I had counted more than three dozen when they dropped in.

  “Adara?” I asked. “Is one of you Adara Goodman?”

  We flew in silence for a moment, the warrior forms staring at us, but still obviously communicating with each other. Finally, one shiny-faced robot broke the silence.

  “Lieutenant Adara Goodman is still on the ground in the ruins of Omaha,” she stated. “Let the record note she was killed in action, and that she died as a hero of the Republic.”

  QUARANTINE

  I was stunned. I didn’t even think warrior forms could die. They were the invincible heroes of legend with stories of everything from natural disasters to zombie incursions. I couldn’t believe that Adara was dead, or that she had given her life saving me. It just didn’t seem real.

  Rebekah understood what had just happened. These machines, some of the very same who had killed her family in the Preserve, had just saved her life at great cost to themselves.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to them.

  There was a terrific boom as the dropship rocketed forward and broke the sound barrier.

  One of the glossy-faced machines stared at me.

  “Pax Faustus,” she said, using my full name, “I am Major Isis Walling of the Republic Vanguard. You are under arrest for suspicion of high crimes against the Republic. You are hereby ordered to offer a full account of the events leading up to this…tragedy. I left almost a dozen friends and comrades on the ground back there. You’d better have a compelling story.”

  So I told her about everything. Semper. Old Vancouver. The Preserve. The Zionists. Magic Valley. Rebekah. Our capture by the Reverend. The bombs. His plan.

  When we arrived back in the capital an hour later, Rebekah and I were quickly loaded into a special ambulance that wouldn’t allow plague germs to circulate to the outside air. We were immediately quarantined in different cells in the basement of Atrix Medical Center, the flagship hospital of the Republic. I don’t know if the quarantine cells had ever been used before, but regardless, she was across the hall from me. I would wave and smile at her, though we couldn’t talk.

  I was offered a lawyer for my defense stemming from the charges against me, and I accepted. During the first night of quarantine, my parents arrived from Valhalla and spoke with me at length about my adventures through the intercom provided. I wish I could have hugged them. I wish I could have touched them. I would get the chance again later, I’m sure.

  I put my hand on the glass and Dad put his hand up on the window with mine. We held it there for a minute, hoping our energies would connect through the inch of triple-pane glass between us. My dad looked over at Rebekah in the other room. He walked over to her glass and did the same. She couldn’t have known who he was, but she put her hand up on the window to meet his, and then smiled at me with tears in her eyes.

  Before he left, Dad looked back at me and smiled at me with a look I’d never seen in all my years of knowing him. For some reason, I imagined that he was daydreaming of Freya Wynveldt, his lost love.

  For two days, Rebekah and I stayed in the rooms undergoing a battery of tests. The glass that separated us was because whatever plague or disease may have found its way into my blood during my journey was a threat to every human outside these walls. Even a simple flu-strain could have wiped out half a generation of children if unvaccinated and unprepared. I accepted that my sequestration was my responsibility.

  Rebekah, however, seemed frightened and alone. She barely understood the basics of diseases and transmission, and slightly understood t
hat a quarantine was necessary to protect the world outside from the bugs in her veins that she had known her whole life. Modern medicine was a different concept entirely. In contrast to prayers and herbal remedies that she had been taught, she was being given pills, injections, and transfusions. She hated it, but I tried to reassure her from across the hallway, through the sealed glass walls.

  I longed to hold her hand again. To sleep next to her. To touch the smooth skin of her face.

  By day three, one of the doctors had come in to share some surprising results. Both of our blood was now clean of foreign parasites and other pathogens, including plague. Rebekah and I were allowed to visit each other, but still not allowed to leave the hospital.

  We sat together, holding hands, as the doctor shared the rest of the news with us.

  Her bloodwork had come back with a series of interesting genetic information. She had the same plague resistance that I had, which is why she and most of her family had been spared the horrors of the disease and its side effects. She also had some specific DNA markers that indicated that someone in her ancestry had been a genetically engineered citizen of the Republic. Her forerunner had been a man named Argus Tew, who had left the Republic almost three hundred years ago in lieu of undertaking the surgical transformations. Because he left of his own accord, and his citizenship was never revoked or renounced, that citizenship extended to Rebekah. She would be allowed to stay in the Republic if she chose to do so, and having committed no crimes, she would be released. Being legally an adult, based on telomere counts, she could go wherever she wanted. This was all very good news for her.

  I, however, had implicated myself in a number of crimes: “transferring stolen property” when I gave the taser to Henry in Old Vancouver; “interfering with an investigation” by not revealing Semper’s location to the authorities; and even “illegal passage” by riding the train without obtaining authorization. The most serious charge, however, was “high treason”, for allowing the Reverend, an enemy of the Republic, to access the Central Library, and for which the punishment was immediate termination. The wording of the punishment was designed for adults, whose robotic form would be forever deactivated. I don’t suppose they ever assumed a non-robot citizen could have the power to commit such a crime, but regardless, they could terminate me in other ways.