by Andy Remic
Durell, with his hood thrown back to reveal the terrible deformities of his twisted face, smiled with a twisting and a crackling of flesh, and stared at Carter with slitted copper eyes. In one deformed claw he held a tiny silver disc which he squeezed—and there came a hiss of superheated air as Carter was suddenly surrounded by a haze, a gentle green glow ... He was caught in some kind of force field, a cube of pulsating energy which ensnared him from all sides. Carter started firing, Browning slapping against the palm of his hand as he dropped to one knee. But the bullets were caught in the haze of the field, spinning gently as Durell turned his back on Carter and moved towards a long alloy panel.
Slowly, Carter uncurled and glanced quickly around, a bad taste nestling in his mouth as he watched the still-spinning bullets melt and drip slowly to the floor. What would it do to a human body? he thought.
‘You are just in time,’ said Durell, pressing a small black button. To Carter’s left, the QIV Quantech Edition military processor began to hum. Durell laughed. ‘In fact, this is a perfection of timing. Especially for you, Mr Carter. Especially for our oldest adversary—and, dare I say, friend? You will be here, at the beginning, at the end, you will witness our triumph—you will witness my triumph.’ Durell’s head had lowered, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper, eyes fixed like bayonets on Carter’s expression.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Carter, filled with horror, submerged in bile.
Screens, previously black squares of obsidian, flared into colourful life along one wall. Cities sprang into view, aerial views displayed in real time from locations across the globe. Durell moved towards the window and looked down over Manhattan. It was bathed beneath him in early-morning sunlight. Durell gave a deep sigh.
Carter’s frowning gaze was dragged to his left, to the glittering images on the screens: to the images of twisting, speeding missiles.
Carter changed the magazine in his Browning and moved slowly forward, towards the walls of his hazy prison. He reached out with the tip of the Browning, and almost had his arm torn from its socket as the field wrenched the gun from his hand—and slowly melted it. Carter watched as liquid metal ran down the inside of the ethereal green glow and pooled near his feet.
‘I hope Spiral have a good life-insurance policy,’ said Durell softly. Carter’s eyes lifted to see—
To see a tiny glitter against the blue sky, a fleeting needle of mercury. And then there came a flash of such brightness, such intensity that even through the heavily shielded windows of the Sentinel Corporation skyscraper Carter flinched, dropped to his knees and knelt there, arms hanging loose, useless, mouth open and incredulous eyes filled with sudden tears.
‘No,’ Carter croaked.
Durell turned. ‘But yes,’ he whispered, as a wall of fire smashed across New York, powered screaming towards them—and left a rising cloud of pulped and pulverised debris, atomised and crushed and pulled into the all-consuming mushroom cloud.
Carter knelt, eyes dark and hollow and fixed disbelievingly on the furnace of devastation. Durell turned, slitted copper eyes watching him closely, and Carter thought:
We are going to die.
We are going to fucking die.
Kade was silent in his brain, observing as the blast wave hit the Sentinel5 tower from which they watched in trepidation. Carter’s stare was dragged back to the screens and he saw missiles flashing through the glittering blue atmosphere of the planet called Earth.
The tower shook. Shuddered. Rocked.
Outside, the world before them was excluded; covered by a death veil; drowned by a sea of ash and fire.
‘You are quite safe,’ came Durell’s soothing voice. ‘These towers were built specifically for this day.’
‘To survive a nuclear blast?’ spat Carter.
‘Yes—only a nominal yield, but yes. After all, nothing without such a design brief would be able to survive that...’ The screen flickered as satellite scanners kicked in and Carter looked down on a desert. His stomach churned as he saw the fused and glowing glass, the edges of a crystallised wasteland, the charred half-corpses of an army lingering at its edges. And he saw that the Global Army, the mammoth united worldwide conglomeration of the soldiers and weapons of all nations formed to combat the Nex and Durell had been utterly—totally—destroyed.
Carter vomited onto the smooth stone floor as the building around him shook with thunder and below him millions of people died in the raging fireball.
There came a fizz.
The force field surrounding Carter disintegrated and Durell motioned to two Nex warriors carrying Austrian Steyr TMP 9mm sub-machine guns. They moved forward on well-balanced heels, clad in simple body-hugging grey uniforms, their faces pale and white, eyes copper and burning. They approached Carter. One reached down with a gloved hand and Carter’s face snapped up, lips covered with spittle and vomit. The long black knife in his fist slammed into the Nex’s eye. The dark steel thrust hard and deep into the brain beyond. Blood spattered against Carter, pumping out over his fist, and he had the Steyr TMP in his grasp even as the Nex began to fall, the sub-machine gun’s strap caught across its shoulder. Carter squeezed the trigger and a swarm of bullets ate into the second Nex, drilling a slick, bloody groove up its chest and caving in its throat. It flipped to the ground, fingers clawing at the metal in its flesh. It screamed long and shrill.
Carter rose to his feet, face covered in speckles of blood, eyes wide and wild and filled not just with anger and hatred but also with a terrible emptiness.
What good? What good now?
You are just too late my friend ....
Durell turned, mouth opening to show deformed teeth within the circular void of his black mouth. His tongue was like a tiny fish. And he was smiling in victory.
Carter wanted to speak.
But he did not. Could not.
There were simply no words.
Outside, the conflagration caused by the thermonuclear explosion continued to roar.
Carter closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.
SIU Transcript
CLASSIFIED NK54/nuke277/SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT
ECube transmission excerpt
Date: November 2XXX
On 5 November 2 XXX two hundred nuclear warheads with varying yields struck strategic military and civilian targets within the space of 35 minutes. Targets included heavily militarised cities such as London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, plus a variety of vast armies and stockpiles of military hardware.
The destruction was on a vast scale. The loss of human life runs into billions.
During the emergency, World Agencies were crippled. They were unable to do anything about these targeted strikes; all fail-safes failed, anti-nuke satellites swam blindly in near-space orbits, ground silos refused to operate: all were under the seemingly omniscient control of the QIV cubic processor. This fully sentient machine finally delivered its threatened promises.
Shortly after the staggered nuclear strikes, a further wave of long-range missile warheads was delivered; this time they did not contain bombs but advanced chemical agents named Half-life Accelerators. These chemicals were scattered over strike zones, and over the following months quickly reduced dangerous radiation levels to a moderate and effectively survivable level.
The self-proclaimed perpetrator of these nuclear attacks was the former Spiral agent named Durell.
World governments have been assimilated and are run with pro-Nex staffing; centres of control, trade and finance [CTF] have been shifted to the many Sentinel Corporation towers which adorn most major world cities. From these Sentinel towers Durell now rules his empire.
More to follow»
SIU Transcript
CLASSIFIED SG54/nuke976/SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT
ECube transmission excerpt
Date: December 2XXX
SpiralGRID/GRID network update:
All major Spiral installations have been destroyed.
All Spiral HQs have been dest
royed.
Personnel numbers have been reduced by 75% and Spiral are operating on a skeleton structure.
All Spiral core mainframes have been destroyed.
Sub-system mainframes remain operational.
Secondary controllers remain operational.
SpiralGRID has been activated and is now live; it is fully on-line.
With the SpiralGRID active, covert operations are being allowed on an accelerating and growing scale. This is being closely monitored. It is suspected that Spiral contains several spies who have leaked critical data, thus allowing such an incredible and devastating attack.
[Note: SpiralGRID is PlanZ. The last line in defence. The final safeguard that nobody ever dreamed would have to be used: a vast network of underground tunnels controlled by the sub-system mainframes; this is what keeps Spiral operational. This is Spiral’s hiding place. This is Spiral’s last resort and its final hope. Let us pray it does not become its tomb.]
Durell and the Nex are aware of the GRID’S existence. They seek to wipe out Spiral once and for all.
We must hope the enemy never discovers its secrets. That is why the rooting out of traitors is KEY PRIORITY.
The current media propaganda for HATE is intensifying; Durell’s empire is seeking to rewrite history, offering the people of the world a fictionalised past. Durell proposes—via FactAds—that HATE was a US-military-created biological weapon—unleashed in the wake of the nuclear dominance, which he claims were nothing more than acts of gross incompetence by world governments.
It has been rumoured than an ‘antidote’, an anti-HATE agent known provisionally as EDEN is being designed alongside HATE and could be used to free humanity from their current thrall. This is an unsubstantiated rumour, but nevertheless contains a high probability factor—when analysing the manner in which Durell first nuked cities, and then used Half-life Accelerators to reduce radiation levels in order to achieve his desired longterm effects.
Priority codes:
8732 6786509863 487 64873 648
8976358796438976897643 534
879689634897 6543789658734
8907098769876532232343223
a] GRID protection
b] Spy termination
c] EDEN confirmation More to follow»
[FIVE YEARS PASS]
ADVERTISING FEATURE
The TV-ProjU sparkled into life with a digital buzz of humming phosphorescence. Images spun and leapt, dissolving and then reanimating into the mercury logo of HIVE Media Productions ...
Scene slowly pans [ground-level shot]: a wide-shot pan of crumbling, devastated cities, buildings half-collapsed and swaying eerily in a bleak holocaust wind; the roads lie cratered, strewn with blocks of concrete and twisted, rusting steel wires.
Scene morphs: into the city perimeter, where huge coils of raze-wire protect a wilderness of green, lush, verdant grasslands beyond. Trees stand swaying in the breeze and grass rolls down to salmon-rich streams. Guards stand to attention, monitoring the checkpoints, the black-masked Nex and gas-mask-protected JT8s inscrutable behind their individualised protection—and nodding knowingly. These are the Guardians of HATE—and the final barrier between a habitable urban landscape and the biological wilderness of No Man’s Land beyond ...
[sombre deep male voice]
—Do you remember a time when you could walk hand in hand with your children through the long grass, the swaying shrubs, the sighing trees?
—Do you remember a time when you could breathe the purity of nature?
—But then came the incompetent military devastation of HATE—a biological weapon spawned from the loins of an incompetent military bureaucracy, ejaculated from the army science labs like alien semen to poison billions of square miles of organic landscape—Trapping YOU—in towns and cities—unable to commute, unable to enjoy the God-given countryside, unable to sample your FREEDOM.
Scene slowly dissolves [into]: a sterile laboratory environment filled with serious-looking men and Nex scientists, working together like brothers, wiggling test tubes, poring over charts, nodding in grim satisfaction at yet another wonderful and incredible breakthrough ...
—Well, all this can change ... here at HIVE Labs we are close to a CURE, close to an ANTIDOTE to the terrible bio-weapon known as HATE. We have invented an almost magical chemical called EDEN, a substance which will obliterate this HATEful disease, this cancer of the green world ... EDEN will bring love, and peace, and most of all... freedom!
Scene morphs [from HIVE Labs to-]: grass, swaying at toe-level, sounds of giggling children, brown, black and white feet running towards the camera as we pull back, showing children of all nationalities skipping and running through the grass, breathing the once-polluted HATE air. They stop at a convenient picnic table under a spreading oak tree. Mum and dad (an inter-racial marriage; mum with knowing smile, dad with chirping laptop) hand out cream-cheese sandwiches and strawberry ice cream.
—You WILL walk free through the world once more! You WILL help the rebirth of a new EDEN!!! DONATE TODAY! HIVE LABS NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!! ... To make the world a greener place. Your unborn babies deserve a cleaner, HATE-free future!
don’t be filled with HATE ... learn to live in a new EDEN!!
SCENE DISSOLVES TO SILVER
PART ONE
COVENANT
no rights were ever given to us by
the grace of god
no rights were ever given by some
united nations clause
no rights were ever given by some
nice guy at the top
our rights they were bought by all
the blood
and all the tears of all our
grandmothers, grandfathers
before ...
My Country
New Model Army
CHAPTER 1
SACRIFICE
Carter sat staring at the Mediterranean. The sky was black, strewn with a scatter of uncut diamonds. The sea crashed rhythmically against the rough jagged rocks.
Beneath him, the patio was hard and cool, and his hand dropped, fingers tracing the delicate contours of honeycombed terracotta as his free hand lifted the bottle of Lagavulin to his lips. He took a long, burning sip. The whisky warmed his belly, and Carter smiled, eyes fixed impassively on the distant sea.
Too much shit, he thought.
Too many years, and too many deaths.
What the hell have we done to our world?
Just what the hell have we created?
He turned at an insignificant sound, a battered Browning 9mm appearing in his fist. Samson padded close, the chocolate Labrador rubbing his velvet nose against Carter’s ribs and looking up with soft brown eyes. Carter placed the Browning on the patio and rubbed at Samson’s grey-peppered muzzle.
‘Getting old, buddy,’ he said and Samson gave a little whine, tilting his head in contemplation. Carter rubbed at the dog’s ears as a cool breeze blew in from the sea—making him shiver. ‘And I’m not really sure who I’m talking about... you or me? Both of us, I think, my friend.’ He chuckled softly, releasing a long pent-up sigh and feeling nostalgia stab sharply at his drifting memories.
In the distance, fireworks suddenly erupted. A silver shower, sparkling briefly and illuminating the rolling waves. They disappeared, and another shower ignited, sparkles of red and blue and green. Carter caught the retort of the explosive: crackles peppered the distance and concussive bangs made Carter shiver.
What the hell have they got to celebrate? The world’s a mess. A living nightmare.
Carter crawled to his feet, sliding the second-hand Browning into the cargo pocket of his knife-cut combat shorts, and lifted the Lagavulin to his lips. He took another sip—just a small one this time. He didn’t allow the alcohol to run freely any more; not like it had when Natasha died. Whisky had flowed like a river, then, into his shattered, welcoming remains.
No, he limited the alcohol fiercely now—had to, with his boy to look after.
Carter’s
steel gaze swept the area before his small house, built on a lonely section of deserted coast on the island of Cyprus. The landscape rolled down from a heavy copse of citrus trees to the rocky seafront and a small stretch of splintered, sandy causeway. In the distance more fireworks showered from the yacht. Carter shaded his eyes and could make out the flashing silhouette of the sleek white craft. He weighed the whisky bottle thoughtfully, and wondered at the foolishness of the partying people on the boat: in the current climate of war, terrorism and post-Nex domination, fireworks were the last thing a man needed. Not unless he wanted a quick return-hail of bullets and a black-clad Nex squad banging on his cabin door.
Ducking inside, Carter padded in bare feet along the tiled marble floors and deposited the whisky bottle on the kitchen worktop. Gritting his teeth stubbornly, he moved like a ghost through the darkness with Samson close behind, halting at the door to the bedroom. He stopped, head tilted, listening. Within, he could hear soft breathing.
Carter pushed open the door, allowing a little moonlight to spill tentatively into the room. He moved forward and stopped by the low bed, gazing down at the pale circle of Joe’s face, serene in sleep, eyes closed, lips pursed, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
Carter knelt and placed a hand against the warmth of his son’s skin. He felt tears well gently, pressure building within his chest, but he pushed them back and smiled instead. For this boy sleeping below him was the only reason Carter still lived, the one thing that had kept him sane; his son was why Carter had not taken his own life.
I am scared of dying now, he realised. Not because of pain, anguish, suffering. Not because of bullets or knives. Carter didn’t care a damn for pain—he had survived enough, lived through enough to understand that. But he now felt a pervasive fear of death—because if he died, then he would never see his son grow up; he would never witness those first moments of which there were so many, moments which would flood his heart with gold and make life in the bomb-tangled mash of the modern world under heavy Nex law and the stranglehold of HATE ... well, make it worthwhile.