Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse

by Leonard, John F.

  Smart casual man. Julian vaguely recalled him being a junior military administrator.

  “I don’t know how that would make sense.” Julian replied carefully.

  “It’s indiscrimate from what I can discern. Everyone is affected. I don’t know how somebody would disseminate the virus or bacteria or whatever it is. It hasn’t been identified or quantified in any sense that I can find.”

  “What is it then? Aliens?”

  A hard-faced middle-aged woman that he didn’t recognise.

  “I don’t know. It’s so far outside of the bounds of our experience that anything is possible.”

  Holte intervened then and after a time steered the discussion away from conjecture and back to more immediate concerns.

  “We really do need to see what’s happening on the surface. We need a reconnaissance of the situation before any further decisions can be made. Carlton, you’re the obvious man for the job but I can’t force you to do it. You can’t go alone so even if you agree to do it we’ll need another volunteer.”

  Holte’s eyes roved the room and silence descended.

  Pearcey was one of the few that had remained static throughout the whole thing. His response to Holte’s implied question was an inflectionless statement.

  “I’ll take Gallagher. He’s not here, working on the power I think, but I’ll speak to him beforehand. We’ll go out through the main garage.”

  Sonny Gallagher was an engineer who had been seconded to the centre. A short, powerfully built man of indeterminate age, Julian had met him once briefly. He’d gained no insight into the guy’s intellect but had been impressed by the pit-bull like physical quality. He and Pearcey would make a nice couple, if you wanted a scary tag cage-fighting team.

  “Good. Thank you Carlton. We’ll adjourn at this point and reconvene after these good men have ascertained our immediate situation. I’ll let you know when that is. Thank you all. Let’s get on with the essentials. Please see Doctor Thornton if you need any assistance.”

  Holte moved away and the group began to break up.

  Pearcey lingered and approached Julian at the podium as the room emptied.

  “I’m guessing you can probably control the surveillance cameras in the Centre? And the ones that cover the entrances?” He asked quietly.

  Julian nodded.

  “Sweet.”

  Pearcey moved a little closer.

  “Do me a favour. Kill the cameras in the main garage and all around that entryway will ya? I don’t want what I think is going to happen up there recorded for posterity.”

  He said it without any emotion and with a stone cold confidence.

  Julian simply nodded in acknowledgement.

  He was beginning to understand that some data was better not known.

  PART 3 ...SANCTUARY DREAMS.

  The miracle of language has enabled mankind to adopt a unique outlook. A trick of development has temporarily outwitted the recognised evolutionary parameters. False gods, we gaze at the mystery, convinced of our ability to fathom and fashion it to our own ends. Wrapped in the delusion that information is power and power is security.

  The accretion of knowledge has levered us into a perilous position. We are children, left to our own devices, without adult supervision. Genetically predisposed to experiment and bewildered when our experimentation births consequences that we cannot hope to understand.

  Like children, we adapt and continue, blinded by our ignorance and invigorated by our apparent success, emboldened by previous escapes. Blundering on, armed only with an inherent desire to investigate and all too fallible luck.

  At some point, that luck will desert us.

  Dr Clarissa Chandra Ph.D. FIBMS.

  The Mysteries of Mutability 2005 Edition.

  Courtesy of Carburgh Publishing.

  <><><>

  I may laugh,

  But it’s not all that funny.

  Livin’ ain’t what it used to be.

  Days are dark,

  Even when it’s all sunny.

  Livin’ ain’t what it used to be.

  Banjo Man Duke Jones.

  Dark Days, 2001.

  Courtesy of Tagen Sound City.

  <><><>

  Chapter 1.

  Sam and Glamour Ever Diminishing.

  In the end, after Sam Scott had sat parked in the layby for what seemed like an eternity, thinking about what she’d lost, the decision on where to drive was essentially unresolved. It was hard to think past the picture of her dead husband and her dead son. When she managed it, the memory of her warped brother and mother eating human meat popped into her head. Went round and round with the mental picture of the boy somersaulting over the bonnet of her once pretty little car and a horde of malevolent children running toward her. A lunatic carousel behind her eyes.

  In the end though, the necessity of movement simply asserted itself.

  <><><>

  That decision to move was no doubt aided by the sight of once-human things twilight-hunting in the fields on either side of her. That sight certainly spurred a response. Delivered an unsettling little stiletto somewhere unexpected and tender, which in turn unpeeled a renewed urgency to protect herself.

  To survive.

  Refreshed that subcutaneous survival instinct that in many people lies subsumed by societal conformity and seldom reveals it’s true ugliness.

  Samantha Scott saw the encroaching danger and reacted simply by shifting her metaphorical arse and, more practically, the gear stick. That she was in her funky little, badly fucked up, soft-top was immaterial, she would have behaved in a similar fashion if she had been on foot or riding pillion on a unicycle.

  She needed to move.

  That lack of windscreen was going to get old, and soon. She was struggling to see past the tears as she sped blindly along. The tears had bled make-up down her face. Combined with the rigours of the past few days, she had a nightmarish appearance that was closer to harpy than the approachable good-girl glamour that was her usual affectation.

  She drove blindly in more than one sense. She didn’t want to see the horror she was passing and she didn’t have a destination in mind.

  Where was there to go?

  Who was there to go to?

  If she’d ever felt more alone, she didn’t know where or when that would have been.

  On some level she must have been thinking more clearly than she consciously realised. Thinking about where she could survive for the night at the very least. She found herself driving through an industrial estate as darkness fell. That was when she saw the man tying the sign to the wall of the warehouse.

  HELP

  SURVIVORS INSIDE

  Red paint, dripping down a sheet of what she thought might be plaster board.

  He’d stopped, staring in her direction whilst warily glancing around himself.

  Without any consideration, she piloted the battered car through the wide entrance and pulled up a little way short of a cluster of randomly parked vehicles. Four of them. Four vehicles. She took the time to turn her own car to face the gateway. Not exactly thinking of getting away but that old subconscious seemed to be chucking in some insurance, however meagre.

  She got out and the man had already moved from the sign, already come to her, was a few feet away.

  Holding a sword.

  A sword, Jesus a sword.

  Really? What the fuck was going on when she thought a man holding a sword was reassuring?

  She stifled a giggle.

  She should have grabbed the frying pan. They could have fenced.

  Clang, spang, sizzle, spark.

  A fry and dice.

  Good old Le Creuset had a short range but made up for it with its shield-like qualities and a can-do cast-iron attitude.

  The giggles threatened to erupt again until images of her son and husband smothered them. And then the insane laughter was gone. Along with most of everything else.

  “Are you taking people in?” She asked the man.
/>
  Up close, he was an odd specimen. Indefinably scary. Someone she might think about crossing the road to avoid in the ordinary world. Tall thinness that disguised broad-boned power. Unruly hair, a tad too long, and a craggy weathered face, like he’d spent a lot of time outdoors. Wearing a long raincoat that struck her as offbeat considering the mild weather, until he pulled it aside and slid the sword into a sheath that was concealed in its folds.

  He smiled at her and the scariness scudded away like clouds in the wind. He had a nice face when he smiled.

  “Yes, of course, you’re welcome to shelter with us. But let’s be quick, we’re trying to keep a low profile and not attract any of those things.”

  He finished securing the sign and led her around the corner of the building and into the warehouse through a solid-looking steel door.

  Dark and big and cooler than outside. Warehouse racking divided by shadowy aisles. A mezzanine level, shadowier still. The other survivors were grouped by shelving below the mezzanine.

  Five people.

  Two men, one at the wrong end of middle age and a younger bearded man. Three women. Two, in their early twenties Sam guessed, were huddled together. Looking dazed and oddly abandoned. The third woman, old and frail, was seated away from the others. Wispy white hair that hadn’t seen a proper hairdresser for too long to be decent.

  This was it? The survivors? Five people, her and the sword toting scary scarecrow at her elbow? She’d expected ten or twenty. A group. Activity.

  The man with the sword introduced them she and instantly forgot the names. He said he’d give her the tour of the building and she followed him through what felt like an up and down maze. Another blank door and into a windowless room that looked like a sports shop from the seventies. Active clothing, hockey sticks, bins full of long socks. Double doors, a basic kitchen, another door and up a staircase opening onto a long corridor. Even more doors on the right and a window to the left that overlooked the warehouse floor she’d just traversed.

  He stopped and turned to her.

  “Offices up here. Toilets and the front entrance below us at the bottom of the stairs. I’d be happier camping up here but the folks down there opted for the warehouse.”

  She nodded.

  Numb and exhausted.

  Relieved to have stopped and have walls around her and other people within view.

  Hopeless and utterly tired.

  <><><>

  Later, she sat in the darkness, away from the others. Cold concrete floor warmed and softened by clothing she’d taken from the shop.

  She’d attempted speaking to them but it was too difficult. The younger women were distant. The men less so, yet still unapproachable, self-absorbed. The old woman unresponsive, lost in some interior world that seemed to preclude what was around her.

  At some point, the sword carrier sat down beside her.

  And, unbelievably, produced a banjo from the folds of the dirty coat. He gently plucked strings and sang some nonsense song. Something peculiarly evocative about laughter when it wasn’t funny. He played it low and melodic and it was disturbing and comforting in equal measure. It might not have been real, had the curious feeling of imagination.

  “I think Margaret has dementia. I found her wondering the streets,” he said when it was done.

  “God knows where she came from or how she survived for that matter. She’s very uncommunicative, I just about managed to get a name out of her.”

  The old woman.

  “Dave, the older chap, was a manager here. I met him ...a long time ago. And ...just happenstance I suppose that we ended up here together. He’s a good man.”

  She stared at the roller door across the floor. Delivery vans would use that. Perhaps Dave, whoever the fuck he was, directed drivers in and out and laughed and joked with them.

  “I won’t ask if you’re okay because I guess none of us are. But can I help you?” He asked.

  Gentle voice.

  A kind question.

  Well meant.

  She shook her head and gave him the ghost of a smile.

  “I don’t know what to do. Where to go.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure if there’s any reason to be alive anymore. Or if I want to be alive in a world like this.”

  He looked at her for the longest time, squinting and serious. The cragginess somehow reassuring.

  “The way I figure it, the world is very different now...and also very much the same. It’s all written in the stars.”

  He paused, gazing fixedly at her. He sounded a little crazy, but who wasn’t crazy now.

  Blue, blue eyes that were oddly naive and fresh, and oddly old and knowing. Kind though. His eyes were kind more than anything else.

  “There were always bad people and there were always good people and there were always those in between, waiting to be swayed one way or other. Do-gooders and do-badders and do-nothingers.

  There’s always been horror and misery and death. And all of a sudden, there’s more of it and it’s easier to see. But it was always there. A lot of times it would be masked up and hidden. Now a lot of it is right out there, plain as the upturned nose on your face.”

  She couldn’t smell alcohol, but Sam wondered if he might have been drinking. She could have done with a drink. Or maybe drugs, she had no experience, it could have been drugs. They were seriously worth considering in the current circumstances.

  Still that gaze, steady and sure. Open, yet veiled, hinting at hard experience and lessons hard learned.

  Wise and weirdly unknowing.

  “You can make your own purpose, same as it always was. Difference is that, now, if you’re one of those people who can’t, if you’re one of those people who always waited for it to be given to them, well, those poor people, those lost babies won’t survive. Could be better that they don’t.”

  He shifted the banjo more comfortably across his knees and pursed his lips in thought before speaking again.

  “Who did you lose?”

  The question was pitched low and still carried the weight of a shout, as if containing the violence of the words had stripped all of the honeyed beauty from his voice.

  “Everyone.”

  An empty reply.

  More flat desolation in one whispered word than a choral lament.

  They sat in silence again for a long time until he stood, straightening his coat and sorting his stuff. He spoke again before moving into the shadows.

  “The way I see it, you can be whatever you choose to be. You can hold true to who you were. Or you can let that go, and be someone different. For what it’s worth, I think you have something good in you.

  I’ve found that’s always a good place to start.”

  <><><>

  Time squashing and stretching and getting lost in itself. Sam existed somewhere beyond any normal reality. She functioned and performed in a vacuum that sucked up hours and mixed light and dark into a dimly recognisable simulacrum of life.

  <><><>

  The failure of her fragile refuge ended that.

  The sharp edges of their new world snapped back into harsh focus.

  They’d all been careful and quiet, cautious about what they did. Loath to venture outside. But crucially, none of them had realised just how far gone the old woman was.

  None of them watched her closely enough.

  It had been many years since Maggie had been able to survive without a constant carer and none of them were able to fulfil that role. Even if they’d recognised the necessity of it. Not in these circumstances. Not as civilisation crashed around their ears and the accepted norms disintegrated in driven mists of blood and claw.

  Maggie shattered their asylum.

  Not intentionally or with any malice. Simply as a fatal result of her confused condition.

  <><><>

  It was night.

  Sam thought it was Friday but the days had developed a surreal quality and kind of bled into each other in the static horror that constituted her world now. Leachin
g the definition like bleach steals colour.

  Dark in the warehouse but it was always dark in the warehouse. A little illumination from dirty skylights but insufficient without the fluorescent strips that hung from the ceiling on long metal chains weaved with dusty electrical cable.

  Heavier, denser darkness meant it was night time.

  She’d been drifting through a parody of sleep. Not real sleep, an uncomfortable drowse that was perpetually balanced on some terrifying precipice, never quite dropping into proper rest.

  As she heard the shouting and banging, she sat up, confused and alert at the same time, grabbing the baseball bat that she’d purloined from one of the shelves. A beautiful piece of equipment. The brand name Easton emblazoned along its bright yellow length. Not some kids toy, a full on professional bit of kit. She imagined the sweet spot on that baby would be awesome.

  The guys would know. Her guys, her husband and son, they would know. They loved baseball for some inexplicable reason.

  Pity she only wanted it to hit monsters.

  Her mind was wandering. Wandering and mistaken. They were gone. Her husband and son were gone.

  Dead, lying in a shared home blood pool. Installed in the hall at unbelievable cost. Blood shed by mother in the footsteps of her son.

  She mentally shook herself and tried to focus on what was wrong.

  Shouting.

  There was a quavery shrill voice shouting and a banging metallic noise. And a breeze that was enough to make her shiver.

  “Peter! Peter! Where are you? Come on, it’s late. I’m locking up. Do hear me? I’m locking up this very minute.”

  It was the old woman, Margaret. It had to be. Shouting the name Peter over and over again, interspersed with some other meaningless babble. And knocking something. A clanging and hollow sound, echoey and dully massive in the otherwise silent night.

  Sam would never know, indeed no one would ever know, that Peter had been Margaret’s cat. When she was first married, she and her husband had found a kitten and adopted it. Margaret had loved that cat. In the grand scheme of things, much more than she’d ever loved her husband, who’d left her, after twenty-three years of largely unhappy marriage, for a slip of a girl who clicked away at a typewriter in the office where he worked.