He drew on the vaporizer again as if the subject was exhausted.
“There has to be a cause ...a reason for the infection and the mutation. If we knew that, we’d have a starting point,” Julian said hopelessly.
Bart didn’t answer, turned his head away, studied the counter on the gizmo, fingers dancing across the little studs at its base.
“Do you know another thing Julian? A rather ridiculous thing. I almost envy you. I have more data than you do but that’s just information. There’s a difference between information and knowledge. I have some limited information but not very much actual knowledge.
Unlike you.
You have genuine knowledge, understanding. You’ve been out there. I haven’t, I’ve been cocooned. I think what’s left of our world has changed in a way that will make experience priceless.”
Julian wasn’t willing to let it go.
“What about the immune boy and his brother? That has to be promising surely? It’s a significant anomaly, siblings sharing immunity. Plus the younger boy is resistant to secondary bite infection. That must be something that we can work with.”
Bart’s face clouded slightly and he replied with a shrug that was as good as a dismissal. Class is over kiddies, don’t bother the clever professor with your ill-defined poppycock.
“Who is the we? Who will be doing this work, this ground-breaking research? Where will they be doing it, this feat of technological ingenuity, an advance that in the ordinary world would be tantamount to a scientific miracle.
Julian, you’re overlooking the fact that we’re operating in an environment that offers vastly reduced resource. We don’t have the requisite personnel, expertise or equipment. Yeah, the boy’s immune, and has been bitten, and is still immune. Great. He’s a tough little nut. His brother is also immune. Again, great. I agree that they’re a precious asset and we’re fortunate to have them. However, we may never have the opportunity to exploit their potential.”
Bart looked away, not quite able to hide the disdain, and Julian felt himself flush with the embarrassment that always seemed to come when he said something stupid and was rebuked. And mixed in with that feeling of chastisement, only a dash of it, was the sense that Bart wasn’t being entirely open with him.
<><><>
Being Above Ground.
They’d been at Black Hills for three days when Caroline knocked on Pearcey’s door.
Black Hills was pretty much amazing when you got right down to it. The complex was far bigger than it had appeared on their arrival. For one thing, you couldn’t see the underground levels from the outside. The glassy block on top of the hill wasn’t exactly the tip of the iceberg but there was a lot more below than above.
There were about forty people there now. All in varying states of shock and awe, despair and disbelief. They rattled around Black Hills like pebbles at the bottom of an empty bin.
Most had chosen quarters below the surface. Pearcey guessed that he could kind of understand that. Being down there, denied daylight, somehow felt more secure. And he could definitely understand the need for a sense of security.
But after his experience at the CIMC London bunker, subterranean didn’t have the same appeal for him. No way did he want to spend any more time underground than was necessary and he certainly had no intention of sleeping there, however state of the art it was.
He’d chosen a room on the fourth floor. Given the clement weather, he’d briefly considered grabbing a tent that he’d spotted in one of the numerous store rooms. Camping out on the roof. He’d compromised on the top floor because going all native on the roof seemed a little, well ...nutty.
That, and he was worried that the fucking Jacks might surprise him, be better at climbing than he realised. Be able to scale sheer glass and slice into his tent while he lay musing on starlight and the days gone down.
Some of their group had clumped together. Julian had opted for the fourth floor and Pearcey was glad about that. Julian was okay and he wanted him around.
So had Caroline.
He liked that too. She had a certain something about her.
When she knocked at his door it was nearly midnight. She was barefoot, wearing the same short business skirt that she’d been wearing when he met her. Paired with an unflattering white tee shirt from the seemingly limitless Black Hills stores.
She didn’t say anything.
Just kissed him, standing on tiptoes, calves taut as she reached up to him. A long kiss, hot and nervous and sweet.
And he said nothing in reply.
Afterwards they did speak.
As they lay close.
Striped with moonlight that slanted through steel slats. Whispered age old inanities to excuse something that had always defied explanation and excuses. And then spoke of things that lay heavy on their hearts and haunted their dreams.
As dawn began to bleed into the sky, Caroline shifted onto her elbow and stared intently at him in the half-light.
“We ought to take what we can now Carlton. Before it’s all over. I think I can do that with you. I think we can enjoy what’s left.”
She kissed his chest and relaxed away from him.
He breathed heavily.
“Yeah. You and me Caz. We’ll try and do that.”
<><><>
Families Old and New.
It was touch and go.
Elliot and George Lowton and Sam Scott nearly failed to make it past the intercom at the foot of the Black Hills complex.
That was three days after they’d escaped Oakhill village. For the three of them, those three days may as well have been three years. Another short lifetime, in a time when life expectation was shortening minute by minute. They survived because to do otherwise would have been unthinkable. They’d endured so much, adapted and battled against the unimaginable, overcome when it would have been so much easier to relent. To not survive at that point would have been beyond forgiveness.
That time, those three days, saw them all reborn, changed once again by the Collapse. Saw then forged and melded, individually and as a unit.
Three days was a long time to travel what would have been a ten minute car journey. But that was before the Collapse. Journey times had taken on new dimensions, elastic dimensions that were governed by unknowable factors not yet within the realms of measurement.
Taking a single step was the same as jumping into an abyss.
Perhaps that was true before the Collapse, but it was truer still after it.
When they were admitted, negotiating the gates and entering the atrium, guns were trained on them. They were a sorry looking trio, bloodied and unkempt, wild looking, as savage in their own way as the creatures they’d killed along the road.
George being bitten caused a confrontation. A standoff that saw all three imprisoned ...after a fashion. No weapons were relinquished, no quarter given.
A suggestion to send them back out, and a more extreme one to shoot them, were both overruled by the tall black man who walked with a limp and carried himself like a weapon. If anyone had looked closely, they would have seen a silent communication pass between Pearcey and Elliot. More said in a few moments of eye contact than could be expressed in an hour of conversation.
The three were quarantined. Spent a week locked in a secure air conditioned room, sleeping on mattresses, sharing a shower and toilet. Supplied with food and water. After what they had endured, it was unbelievable luxury.
During their incarceration, and the days of ordeal that went before it, they discussed many things. The subject of Joe Byrne was a topic that they pondered on more than one occasion. Their unlikely saviour, a courageous man who seemed blind to his own bravery. His sacrifice was huge in their minds. They owed him their lives and had no way to begin repaying the debt. How to honour such a man in a world that had, in itself, become little more than a monument. In the end, they decided that he would live in their hearts and memories, the only true memorial that has ever mattered.
When George
asked if they could be a family, the three of them spent a long time in silent contemplation. Mentally tallying their losses, the twists of fate that could rob them of so much and still leave the possibility of love. The answer was obvious but George really was quite a remarkable boy. Not just immune to mutation and resistant to panic, but perceptive in a way bordering prescience. To voice the question would seal the bond. They joined hands and then hugged so fiercely that it hurt their bruised and abused bodies. Their mixing tears were like sweet water on parched throats.
When no infection manifested itself, they were ushered into the Black Hills community. They had become an amalgam that was stronger than the mettles that made it.
<><><>
Days End.
The sunset was incredible from the roof of the complex.
An ever changing snapshot of sliding, shifting beauty.
Purple and pink, shot with hot oranges and heavy intimations.
Never to be repeated.
A one-off.
Like all sunsets.
Elliot leaned into Adalia and gently kissed her.
She smiled at him and turned back to the view. Spoke as she considered the flaming horizon.
“I’m glad your brother was there. Glad you found him.”
“Yeah, George is special ...in a good way, not the spactard way.”
They shot looks at each other and hid smiles.
He turned and held her, a picture bleached in dying sunlight.
Kissed her, harder, more urgent.
Adalia broke it and turned away again.
He studied her profile as a tear rolled down her face.
“Addy, I’m ...I didn’t mean to ...”
She shook her head and looked at him, smiling sadly through tears.
“We will. But not here, not now. Downstairs, later. Not here. Just us, where there’s nothing else.”
He placed a protective arm around her.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” She said, staring at the beauty.
Elliot strengthened his grip on her shoulder, enclosing her with his arm.
The tears rolled down her face, golden and iridescent in that slowly dying light.
“Our world. It’s over.”
Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse Page 53