Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse

by Leonard, John F.

  She had no desire to see what was taking place on the street below but she knew the others were right. Even so, at that moment, she wanted nothing more than to find somewhere comfortable and secure and curl up in a tight ball and sleep. Sleep until all of this went away and she could wake up and find everything was normal. Wake up and find her biggest problems were that her boyfriend was vaguely repulsive, and not so boyish, her career wasn’t what she’d dreamed of, and her family was a distant dysfunctional oddity. And thinking of all of that just made her want to sit in a corner and cry.

  Ranj unlocked and carefully slid the door open.

  Most of the balcony was inset into the building so that the steel rail that fronted out onto the street was only slightly protuberant from the facade. To get a full view of the street below they had to creep right up to the railing and peer downwards between the bars.

  They sat on the cool tiled floor and watched for a long time. Speaking very little, each attempting to come to terms with a new world. A world where the ordinary was no longer ordinary and lethal was becoming routine.

  <><><>

  Ranjit Basuta’s given religion was Sikhism. As far as he was concerned, it was an accident of birth, passed to him by his parents and their Punjabi origin. Like many immigrants, his mother and father were adaptable. They’d been perfunctory in their religious practise and encouraged him, like themselves, to be flexible about what cultural influences he retained.

  Integrate, integrate, his father had instructed him on several occasions. You are born in this country Ranjit. You grow up and live here, so embrace that and leave the past behind you. History, it wants to saddle you with all its shit. Take only what suits you.

  As with much of what his father said, he took the advice to heart. One consequence was that as far as religion went, he was a disinterested agnostic. The agnosticism wasn’t any comfort now. It certainly didn’t help with the fact that his daddy was gone.

  Despite his lack of religion, as he sat and observed the new world unfolding below him, there was a part of his mind that silently petitioned the God in which he didn’t believe. Not that he believed his beseeching would change anything either for that matter.

  There was definite activity down there.

  Not bustling as it might have been on a normal day, but activity all the same.

  Those creatures were moving around. They weren’t always there, sometimes the street was eerily empty. That emptiness was unnerving in itself. A favourite and familiar web page stripped of text and images.

  Sometimes there was only a lone individual. Moving slowly in a posture that already seemed distinctive. Stooped and somehow alert. Without apparent objective but with an attitude that bore all of the hallmarks of stalking.

  Unfocused predation.

  Ranj may not have expressed it in those terms but his bird’s eye view convinced him of their danger and their essential ...difference. Gave him another angle on it in many ways.

  Difference was the word alright. They were different to anything he’d ever seen in his life. From this height, their shape was still human in essence. Head, body limbs. But there was also something irrefutably inhuman about them.

  Hairless and their proportions were subtly wrong. Head with too much jaw. Arms and legs too thin. Hand too big. To Ranj, the very texture of them conveyed something utterly alien. And they moved in a way that had more to do with an animal searching for prey than anything human.

  At times, as if by some twisted magic, a pack of them would appear and they would sweep through the street with an unspoken, unified purpose. That happened twice while he watched.

  In each instance, a vehicle roared past. Once coming from the city centre and the second time heading into it. Both times a pack of those things seemed to form and coalesce, drawn by the passage of the vehicle. The pack followed the direction of movement and noise, slowly dissipating in its wake.

  For a long time, the three of them sat and watched without speaking. Absorbed in the scene below them and in their own thoughts, their own disbelief. Ranj stole occasional glances at his new companions.

  He knew Caroline by sight. She was senior management. Not someone he’d had any regular interaction with. Just another face of authority around the office. Attractive in her own way but not someone he’d registered on any real level.

  Adalia on the other hand was stunning. Scruffy and beat up, weren’t they all, but just stunning beneath the surface dirt and grime. Young, it was difficult to estimate exact age these days, but the sort that you remembered if you saw her. The type of girl he’d grown up knowing was out of his league. Girls that pretty only ever got asked out by the cool guys. The guys who were handsome and had a car when they sixteen. Wore designer clothes even though they didn’t have jobs. Dangerous guys he supposed if he was honest.

  Or at least he judged them to be dangerous. And he wasn’t dangerous or cool. In his own eyes, he was as average as you could get. Ranj had no grandiose ideas about himself. No self-delusions, as he would have considered them. He looked unremarkable if not a bit geeky. He wore cheap unhip clothes and he wasn’t rich or ever likely to be. He wasn’t stupid but he wasn’t the guy that got tagged as really smart either.

  If anybody had ever taken the time, his teachers for example, or one of the many employers in the numerous dead end jobs he’d had since leaving school, they might have told him that his biggest problem was low expectations. If it was a crime that Ranj had slid through life mostly ignored and unnoticed, he himself was guilty of aiding and abetting.

  As he gazed through the balcony bars, his mind was a whirl of the momentous and inconsequential, thoughts chasing each other like leaves in an autumn wind. His personal loss. Parents gone. Friends, the same. At least to his knowledge. He’d spoken to a couple of buddies who hadn’t been affected by the city flu but their phones were dead now.

  It might be the network was down of course. But he thought it just as likely that it was them that were down.

  Down and out. Caught and killed as the collapsed came back, hungry and changed.

  He couldn’t quite get his head round the fact that he himself had killed. The evidence lay cooling in a congealing pool in the lobby.

  Was it murder? Murder to have killed that thing that had once been human? The bigger picture, the broader situation beyond his private hurt and responsibility, was too big to contemplate or understand in any true sense. There was only one meaningful conclusion that he could begin to grasp at that stage. The world he knew had arrived at an end point.

  Finished. Done and gone.

  There were no longer any givens. Everything that he took for granted was now open to question.

  Everything.

  Where he lived, what he ate, what he did. Everything. All of the rules by which he lived had changed. All of the norms had ceased to apply. Whatever came next was something than he couldn’t imagine.

  It might have seemed odd to be sitting scrunched and hiding on an office terrace with a woman he barely knew and another he didn’t know at all, but it was an insignificant bizarreness in the grander scheme.

  Why he should be here and not someone else was a redundant question. Why he hadn’t been infected with the flu was another one.

  Redundant questions. There were no answers, so asking the questions was pointless.

  <><><>

  Who knows how long the three of them would have sat uncomfortable and horribly mesmerised. Into the night? All night and into the dawn of a new day? Possibly.

  The question was rendered moot by the explosion. To their left, a mile away, the gleaming black glass slab of the Hyatt hotel rose into the sky like a giant abstract gravestone. Ranj had actually considered the hotel as a possible refuge. Before it went and blew up.

  In the strangely hushed city, the explosion concussed the air with an abruptness that was alarming. The eyes of all three snapped up to see debris begin to fall from a floor near the top of the building. The clink and ping of shattered glass floated t
o them through still air. Sunlight flashed from the fragments, stark and brilliant. Tendrils of dark smoke began to curl from the rip in the perfect façade.

  “What the fuck.” Caroline stood, hands to eyes to concentrate her view.

  “Get down, you can be seen,” Ranj hissed at her as soon as he realised that she was visible to whatever was below them.

  The woman muttered an apology and crouched again as they all watched the smoke thicken and increase in volume. Engrossed as they were, only Adalia noticed the figure running from the direction of the hotel toward their position.

  “Look,” she whispered and pointed at the road.

  “It’s a man. Not one of them, someone like us. Unchanged.”

  The man was short and thickset. Cropped hair. He ran with a determined jog. Not fast but with a steady unflagging pace. As he got closer, they could see that he wore the remains of a uniform.

  “Should we call him? Try to help him?” Caroline asked, her hands white-knuckled around the bars of the railing.

  Before Ranj or Adalia could answer, several creatures appeared behind the running man. More began to materialise from side roads and in front of him. Perhaps drawn by the explosion. Perhaps alerted by the noise of his passage.

  The man slowed and reached down to his side to produce what looked like a handgun. He levelled it and fired.

  The nearest creature staggered to its knees and dropped. The man swivelled to his right and began to move in that direction, firing again repeatedly. The boom of the gun was lessened by distance, robbed of its concussive volume, but nevertheless harsh, shocking.

  Some of his targets were hidden by their perspective, high on the balcony. They didn’t see the results of all of his shots but they couldn’t miss the following group as it closed in him. Nearer still, more creatures flew at him from the shadowy side streets. If he’d intended going to the right, something made him change his mind and he once again began his jog towards them. He was encircled now. Creatures visible on all sides.

  “We have to help him,” Caroline said.

  “How? What can we do?” Ranj replied.

  And then, before any discussion was arrived at, the man moved beyond anyone’s help.

  As he desperately fired the gun empty, a creature crashed into him from the right, carrying him to the ground. The man grappled hopelessly. The gun skittered away useless and lost. They saw him lose the battle in the spray of his own blood. The gathering pack enclosed and partially obscured his fallen form.

  Flocking. It was like they were flocking. A venue of carrion eaters at a carcass. The man disappeared completely as the creatures swarmed, crawling over each for a chance to feed. Snapping and snarling. Fearsome and aggressive, yet rarely truly fighting amongst themselves.

  Adalia turned away and crawled on her hands knees inside. Caroline and Ranj stayed longer. But not that much longer.

  Ranj left last. He closed the door on the terrace as quietly as he could. Then joined the others. He ran his hand through his short hair and chewed his lip. Adalia caught his eye and they held each other’s gaze for what seemed an eternity before he looked to Caroline.

  “How long do you think we can stay here?”

  Caroline didn’t answer.

  The tears started slowly but turned to sobs that she fought to control. She stood and mutely indicated one of the rest rooms before walking away.

  Ranj understood to some extent. There was a part of him that felt like crying as well.

  “Do you think she’ll be okay?” He asked Adalia.

  The girl shrugged, not unkindly, but without an answer.

  “You know her better than me. She probably just needs some time.”

  Adalia stood and walked back to the terrace doors and then began a circuit of the floor, stopping at each window in turn and carefully looking out. As she went, she entered and inspected the private offices.

  Ranj watched her for a while and then just sat and thought. It was a good idea, what she was doing. Check the offices for stuff that might be useful. Monitor what was going on outside. He ought to be doing something useful but all he felt was tired. Whatever energy had seen him this far was fading fast. He wanted to lie down and sleep as much as anything else. Except he didn’t think he’d sleep very well. He couldn’t imagine sleeping well ever again.

  It was twenty-five minutes before Caroline’s limping return. Her face was scrubbed clean and her hair damp and scraped back. Robbed of dirt, she appeared raw and vulnerable.

  She sat by Ranj. Somehow awkward and innocent, shorn of make-up, barefoot, legs pressed together in her too short skirt.

  “You okay?” He asked her diffidently.

  “Yes. No. You know,” she replied with an effort at a smile.

  “I’m sorry. It’s been a ...long day. And that, the man, that was too much. Too fucking much. Just too terrible on top of everything else. I wanted to help him but you were right. There wasn’t anything we could do. Where’s the girl?”

  Ranj nodded at the far side of the huge office floor. Adalia was making her way back to them carrying a bag. She smiled at Caroline as she approached and produced a pair of trainers from the bag with a shy flourish.

  “Don’t know your size but they look like they might do. I found them in one of the offices. Size 7. They ain’t new but they are Nike.”

  She offered a lacklustre smile.

  “God Adalia, you’re a star.”

  Caroline awkwardly hugged the girl and took the trainers and began lacing them onto her feet.

  “I’m a 6 but I can lace them tight. On one foot anyway, the other one hurts so the extra room might be better.”

  She stood and tested them, flexing her legs, wincing but nodding her approval.

  “Trainers, that’s always a good look with a skirt. A city full of shoe shops and I’m overjoyed with stolen second hand trainers that are the wrong size. You know the worlds gone fucking mad when I’m seriously considering wearing socks with trainers and a skirt.”

  The attempt at humour seemed to deflate her. She sat again and struggled to hold back another wave of tears.

  “We’ll get some that fit. You know, when we get the chance,” Adalia said to fill the silence.

  “And look. I found this as well.”

  She pulled a walkie talkie from the bag.

  “I was thinking it must be what the security uses here. There must be other handsets lying around somewhere. If we all got one, we could use them to communicate. This is a pretty big place right, and I don’t want to be shouting. And maybe we could set up some sort of lookout up here and one of us be down near the doors.”

  She paused, suddenly embarrassed at taking centre stage with them. Caroline nodded and Adalia went on.

  “I wanna be able to help people if we can. Like you helped me.”

  She looked at Caroline.

  “If you hadn’t come back for me, I’d be dead. Dead like that man. I don’t think we could’ve helped him anyway but ...but we couldn’t even try. I don’t how long we’ll be here but what if someone goes past who can help us? Nobody’s gonna just find us up here. I tried some of the computers and phones. Nothing’s working. We ain’t gonna be ringing out or messaging anyone.”

  Ranj took the handset from her and examined it. A compact black device with a long flexible aerial sprouting from the top. Chunky and heavy in his hand. He’d seen plenty of the security guys using them. Not just here but all round the city centre. Stores and clubs.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right. Radios are a great idea. I don’t know the range of these but we might even pick up someone outside. Even if we can’t, the lookout idea makes a lot of sense.”

  He glanced up at them both and hesitated before continuing.

  “Adalia’s spot on doing this. We ought to do the whole building. Look for anything we can use or need. Collect it all. Lock all the floors off. Just use routes that we know are safe and locked. Set up ...let’s say two bases. One here and another one downstairs. We ought to fin
d weapons as well. Something better than a fire extinguisher.”

  Caroline was nodding.

  “I’ve seen all the walkie talkies in a rack in security. Where they charge them. And I more or less know how to use them, the building manager showed me once.”

  Adalia gingerly placed the handgun on the table.

  “I’ve got that but I don’t know how to use it.”

  Ranj and Caroline stared at it with a mixture of apprehension and ignorance. Caroline had already seen it of course, but resting there on the table, the gun assumed greater weight somehow. Both she and Ranj admitted that they’d never fired or even handled a gun.

  “You keep it for now. It is yours after all and neither of us would be competent with it,” Caroline said eventually.

  Adalia took it back without any visible enthusiasm. But in the recesses of her mind, a little flower of relief blossomed.

  <><><>

  Adalia harboured an instinctive hatred of the gun. The cold oily touch of it made her skin crawl and brought a bitter taste to her mouth. If it was loathing triggered by association, the smell of Kalvin floating stealthily round her head, then it was that self-same memory that made her want to keep possession of it.

  Made her breathe an inward sigh of relief when she was able to clumsily shove it back into the torn holster of her pocket. As repugnant as the gun was, it made her feel stronger. More powerful. She couldn’t forget the uncertainty in Kalvin’s eyes when she’d pointed it at him. He’d been so convinced of his power over her. So confident. So sure. Ready to empty himself into her. Prepared to force her to swallow his slime and no doubt ready to demand she beg to do it again as if she’d enjoyed it.

  And she’d hurt him. He hadn’t expected resistance and she thought she really had managed to hurt him a lot. But ultimately, that pain wasn’t what stopped him and allowed her to escape. It was the threat of the gun that accomplished that. He’d discovered that she could hurt him but that hadn’t scared him. However clever she’d been, however brave, they’d both known that she’d also been very lucky and he’d been very complacent.