Extinction NZ (Book 3): The Five Pillars

by Smith, Adrian J.

  His eyes widened at the sight of the corridor full of white Variants. The wetas were bustling through the throng, mandibles clicking together, gobbets of saliva dripping to the ground. Derek cringed, every fibre in his body repulsed at the sight of the wetas.

  Desperate, he scanned the passage for the door that led to Sophie. He could only just make out the top of the rubber seal. The white Variants milled around like they were awaiting instructions.

  Derek smiled. Yes, they were ferocious, but only acted on her instructions. He said a silent prayer and inched forwards, putting one foot in front of the other and keeping his arms by his sides. The white Variants turned and watched him approach. Several sniffed the air but stayed back. Derek took another few steps. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead and ran into his eyes, blurring his vision. The Variants parted, showing him the door.

  When he reached it, he peeked in the small window. His heart fluttered at the sight of Sophie’s sarcophagus. He gritted his teeth and punched in the code. The Variants shrieked as he burst through the door, slamming it behind him.

  First, he checked the computer display. Sophie’s vital signs were normal. He brushed the condensation off the window and peered at his little angel. Sophie. Meaning wise.

  I’m sorry, Sophie. Daddy wasn’t wise. But it was all for you.

  Searching for a way to release his daughter, Derek finally looked around the rest of the room. He took a step back at the empty slots along the walls. At the shattered glass on the floor and at the open doorway.

  What the hell had happened in here?

  Derek pressed the touch screen, scrolling through until he found the release button. Grinning at the hiss and click the sarcophagus made, he yanked open the lid and pulled Sophie into his embrace. Tears coursed down his cheeks. He had waited seven long months to hold his daughter again. He’d had a hand in the deaths of hundreds. Protected the beasts as they devoured what was left of the population. He choked back a sob. Just feeling her skin pressed against his flooded his mind with myriad memories. Of playing tea parties. Of ice cream dribbling down the cone and over her hand. Of reading stories at bedtime. Of trips to the coast to comb the beach after a storm.

  Derek yanked the EPG wires off her head and chest. He gently removed the IV drips from her wrists and lifted her away from the sarcophagus.

  The door beeped and hissed open. Derek looked up, straight into the eyes of Dr Marks. He grasped Sophie tighter, and flicked his eyes at the white Variants snarling behind her.

  Dr Wilson stuck his ratty face in the doorway and smirked. “Derek. You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you? Put Sophie down and we’ll have a little chat.”

  “Piss off! You’re not going to hurt her. I know what you did to the others.”

  Derek shifted Sophie, wrapping her legs around his waist, and back-pedalled towards the open control room door.

  “Stop!” Marks said.

  He shook his head.

  “Where are you going to go?” She gestured at the Variants. “You’re surrounded. My children patrol every floor.”

  Derek cast his eyes back to the shattered glass and empty slots. “What about them?”

  “They’ll be recaptured momentarily. It’s no concern of yours. Now put the girl back in the pod and step away.”

  Derek heard glass crunch under his feet. He risked a peek down and spotted the gas valve from the pipe that fed the pod. He looked back at Wilson and the white lady. “Burn in hell!”

  Adrenaline flooded his system, flowing into his muscles. Derek growled and kicked the valve off the pipe, flooding the room in cold gas. He smiled at the smell. Pivoting, he sprinted from the room, reached into his pocket, flicked his zippo lighter and tossed it behind him.

  The exploding gas threw him and Sophie forwards through the door. Derek cradled Sophie’s head as they slammed to the floor. The air rushed from his lungs. He desperately kicked at the door, closing it.

  Shrieks and howls buzzed in his brain. Grimacing from the pain in his leg, he scrambled up and dashed into the workroom beyond.

  — 24 —

  Derek clutched Sophie to his chest and ran as fast as he could through the workroom. An assortment of laboratory equipment was strewn about, most of which was incomprehensible to him. Sophie clung to him now, her face buried in his neck. It felt good to have her warm breath blowing over his skin again. He just wished it were under better circumstances, more peaceful ones. He choked back a sob, thinking of how he had failed to keep her safe. There had just been too many of them, and he was no soldier. He had done what he’d needed to do to keep himself and his daughter alive.

  He paused at the junction of the passageway.

  Left or right?

  He had decided to head left. The top floor of the complex where on a previous visit he had seen the communications tower and, below that, a track down the mountain. His only plan beyond that was to head for the armed forces in Thames and play the malnourished survivor.

  They won’t know what you did or who you are.

  A thought that had been festering away at the back of his mind since early that morning rose to the surface.

  Where is Clubber?

  He pushed it aside and kept his ears strained for any sounds of pursuit. So far, his fire and gas bottles stunt had bought him some much-needed time.

  Derek made his way down the narrow passage and up three flights of stairs. He paused at the door that led to the largest of the labs in the complex. This was the quickest way to the exit. He had been in this lab once and shivered at the thought of what lay beyond. This was where Dr Marks carried out her “Research”, as she called it. Derek could only think of it as “Experiments”.

  He looked down at Sophie and gently brushed strands of sweaty hair from her face. Seeing her smile up at him tugged at his heart. All the guilt he felt for his actions gnawed its way to the front of his mind. His anger at the Variants. At the men responsible for the beasts and the danger he now found himself in. Like any father, all Derek had wanted was to give his daughter a happy, loving upbringing. He sighed.

  Instead, we have this.

  “Close your eyes, okay, baby?”

  Sophie nodded and shut her eyes tightly. He let out a breath to try to calm his nerves and opened the door.

  The main laboratory was a long rectangular room, with workbenches on every wall filled with beeping machines and computers. In the far-right corner, Derek could see a space sealed off with plastic. Tubes disappeared inside it, a hissing sound emanating from them. He cast his eyes to the centre of the room and gasped, despite knowing what he would find.

  Four soldiers were strapped to metal gurneys, recent prisoners, he guessed. Two were thrashing about, skin blotchy and blood seeping from their eyes. He had seen the virus take hold before, changing people in front of him. A normal functioning human one minute, a wild crazy animal the next.

  A third soldier had been cut open, his ribs splayed and his intestines exposed.

  “Keep your eyes closed, baby,” he whispered to Sophie, as if speaking any louder would wake the autopsied man.

  The thrashing soldiers caught their scent and struggled against their bonds with such ferocity that Derek took a few quick steps forwards and focused on the bindings. The hand of the fourth soldier shot out and grabbed Derek’s hand, locking on with a vice-like grip.

  Derek tried to pull away, but the man held fast.

  “Help me, please.”

  Derek had a flashback of Chang lying trapped under the bus, holding out his photograph. The man gurgled and sucked in breaths. Something moved under the skin, inside his throat.

  The soldier gagged and choked, gasping for air. His eyes bugged out, and Derek noticed his lips were turning blue. Something was suffocating him. It moved under his skin again, and the man thrashed around on his gurney.

  The object in his throat stopped moving, and the soldier’s mouth gaped open. Then a worm-like creature with tentacles crawled from his mouth, its fat body struggling to
wriggle free. It wrapped its tentacles around the man’s head and yanked itself out with a pop, tearing the man’s jaw off in a sickening snap. It squeaked and stabbed its appendages up the nose of the soldier, tearing it, then scooped out yellow and grey brain matter.

  Derek, rooted to the spot, gawked at the creature. The worm squeaked again, snapping him from his trance. Spotting the man’s dog tags, Derek risked snatching them off his neck.

  He hugged Sophie closer to his chest and fled the lab.

  As he ran down the last corridor, a thousand thoughts flooded through his mind. Derek glanced down at the tags. Lance Corporal Nathan Mauger.

  He had been selfish up until now and had only thought about his and Sophie’s survival. All the things he had done had been brushed aside and forgotten about. As he ran down the hallway, guilt nagged at him like a voice deep in his conscious.

  Help them. Put right what you did.

  Derek paused outside the door to freedom. He knew it was the right one. Communications had been painted onto the grey door. He looked down at Sophie and back at the door. In that moment, he knew he couldn’t allow the atrocities of this lab to continue. Dr Marks was like the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Humanity at its worst. The devil wasn’t in hell. The devil walked these halls.

  He put Sophie on the ground and looked into her beautiful eyes.

  “Daddy has to go and do something, baby. I want you to go into this room and wait for me.” He took off his watch and handed it to her. “If Daddy isn’t back by 11:00, I want you to climb up the ladder and run down the mountain. You keep running until you find soldiers, okay?”

  Sophie brushed a tear from her eye. “I want to stay with you, Daddy. Please.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s too dangerous. The bad things are everywhere.”

  Sophie sobbed into his chest, her chest thumping against his. Derek let the tears flows. Tears that he had locked away. He started to push his daughter through the door but she started screaming and holding out her hands. He stopped and lifted her up, clasping her against his chest. He couldn’t leave her again.

  “Okay. Let’s go. But you have to stay close to me. If I say run, you run back here and outside. Okay?”

  Sophie nodded and latched onto his first finger like she used to when she was a toddler.

  Derek and Sophie made their way back down the corridor, avoiding the lab with the soldiers inside. He guided her down the main stairwell and let the door thud behind him. Shrieks and gunfire echoed up the stairs. He grabbed Sophie’s hand and risked a peek over the railing. Several floors below, he could see soldiers firing weapons at the white beasts.

  Derek hugged the wall and snuck down to the next floor. Five minutes later they were in the service stairwell. It was wider and had rubber mats glued to the treads. Not for the last time, he wondered how they had transported all the equipment into the complex.

  He could tell now that he was on the same floor as everyone else because of the rat-a-tat of the rifles and the howls and wails from Dr Marks’s experiments.

  Derek sighed and gripped Sophie’s finger tightly. Pausing at the door, he listened. By his calculations, he should be at the far end of the long passage from the firefight.

  He cracked the door open and peeped through the gap. White Variants swarmed in the passageway. He widened the opening and pulled Sophie behind him, then slowly edged through into the passage. Keeping his back to the wall, he crept into the workroom on his right. He could see the frizzy hair of the psycho that was the lady in white through the small windows.

  Derek stole through the darkened room and flanked the gathered monsters. Letting go of Sophie’s hand, he checked to see how much ammo he had left. Two bullets.

  Better make them count.

  As quietly as he could, he clicked the selector to fire and chambered a round before crouching down to his daughter’s level. “When I say run, I want you to run for the soldiers, okay?”

  “What soldiers?”

  “You’ll see them when I open the door. Don’t look at what Daddy is doing, just run. Please.”

  Sophie twirled her hair in her hand, then nodded. Taking a deep breath, Derek opened the door and pointed his rifle at the back of Dr Marks’s head. He could hear her talking but ignored her insane drivel. Derek hesitated for a fraction, thinking of all the death this woman had caused. How much pain and misery. Not only to humans, but other animals too. He felt something stir deep down in his soul. It was pity, pity for her madness.

  Derek prayed for forgiveness before pulling the trigger.

  — 25 —

  Major Ken “Pig” Hind grasped the Glock 17 in his right hand and with his left caressed the barrel and felt the smooth nylon-based polymer. Despite the pain that throbbed through his body, he smiled. After eating the meal Dr Wilson had provided, he had blacked out and awoken to the sight of the beautiful, petite, pixie-haired woman who was doing her best to hold him up. Not a bad way to wake up from the nightmare of the last couple of days. He did a quick mental check of his injuries. The burns ached as usual. The gash and the bullet wound on his leg were seeping blood through the bandage. And his head hurt like a bitch. Ken smiled again.

  I’m still alive. I can keep fighting.

  He hobbled down the corridor and glanced at the strange group of soldiers. Up front was a tall guy with a bright green pack on his back and a red-handled machete strapped to his leg. He seemed to be the leader and glanced back at the woman a lot. Like all the time. Following the leader was a teenage boy with a prosthetic blade that clicked with every step he took. He was holding the hand of a young child. Ken cast his eyes back to the other prisoners staggering behind him. As a soldier, he knew how to assess a situation, and he knew that most of these people weren’t going to make it. The stronger Maori men adorned with tattoos had the best chance. Bringing up the rear was the cutest brunette he had ever had the pleasure of seeing. Hatchets peeked out from her back and she held the L96 rifle like she knew how to kill. She looked up and caught him watching. She frowned before casting her eyes down and smiling.

  Things were definitely looking up.

  The leader took them to another stairwell and ushered them inside. The prisoners and the soldiers crowded behind them, filling up the cramped space.

  The leader turned and looked at Pig before glancing away. “We don’t have much time before those bloody Variants sniff us out, so I’ll be brief.” He looked at the woman holding up Ken. “I’m Jack Gee. We’re what’s left of The Renegades. We were sent on a mission to retrieve a logbook from this complex. Things went a bit south after we answered a distress call and ended up in here. I know of a way out, but it’s going to be tough. We’re low on ammo and fresh out of luck. Best we can think of is to aim for a Pa that’s a couple of clicks to the east.”

  One of the Maori men lifted his head. “You get us out of this death trap and I’ll get us to our Pa.”

  “Okay. I know most of you can’t run. Once we go through the next door, it’s a short way to the maintenance room that leads to one of the old mines and out.”

  Pig was about to say something when a high-pitched wail broke his train of thought. He exchanged a look with the woman holding him up. “I think I’m okay. You’re going to need both hands free to fight these pricks.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not really, but what choice do we have?” He took his arm off her shoulder and put his weight on both legs. His left knee buckled, but he managed to keep upright.

  “Thank you for what you did back there. I’m Major Ken Hind.”

  “Dee Gee. And you’re welcome.”

  “Dee Gee? You guys are married?”

  “Sure are. Wait? Major Ken Hind?”

  “You’ve heard of me?”

  “Ben mentioned your name a couple of times, that’s all. Something about a mission to Wellington?”

  “You know Ben? Captain Ben Johns?”

  “Yes. He trained us. He’s overseeing operations with Colonel Mahana in Thames. Operation U
tu.”

  “Operation Utu?”

  The door to the corridor thudded in its hinges, shaking the metal framework. Dee handed him two spare magazines for the Glock. “Fill you in later.”

  Shrieks filled the stairwell as Pig hobbled up the stairs after the Renegades. He smiled to himself. It would be just like Ben to gather a ragtag band of brothers and sisters to fight. He saw it in their eyes. Determination. Pride. Sacrifice. A willingness to die for your country, a willingness to fight for your loved ones so they could live free. It was what all armed forces wanted. In his mind, the people who believed it were the people who succeeded. A keen student of military history, he often smiled at a quote he had found that affirmed his opinion.

  “In war, both sides think they are in the right.”

  The blood flowing through his legs loosened his muscles enough to allow better mobility. Pig dropped back and helped some of the other prisoners. He made eye contact with the cute brunette. Her forehead was covered in sweat as she staggered under the weight of two females.

  Pig signalled to the men who looked able. “Help the others. Hurry.”

  He limped down the stairs and took the weight of the female on the left. “Hey. I’m Ken,” he said, glancing over at the cute brunette.

  “Yalonda.”

  Ken gritted his teeth, lifting the woman. “Yodanda?”

  “Yalonda.”

  “Yomama?”

  “All right. Pen. Time for being a smartass later.”

  He grinned at her, giving his best smile.

  The door below them smashed open and thundered against the wall, the sound echoing up the stairwell.

  Pig quickened his pace. “Contacts!” he screamed in warning.

  White Variants poured into the stairwell, clawing over each other, snarling and hissing. He growled and pushed the woman in front of him. Finally, he reached the landing. Dee held the door, urging them through.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  Bullets pinged off the handrails. Splinters of metal and paint flicked into the air. Pig ducked through the doorway and turned to cover Yalonda. She raised her rifle and let off a volley of her own.