After Life (Power Reads Book 2)

by Dean Crawford

  Dr Reed shook his head, the smile not slipping from his features.

  ‘Alas, Kerry, you will not turn them. They know the difference between desperation and certainty, and which side they wish to be.’

  ‘So did I,’ Chad said.

  ‘Promised you immunity, did they?’ Dr Reed asked. ‘Said that they’re already immune?’

  ‘They’re walking proof of it,’ Chad replied.

  ‘Are they?’ Reed challenged. ‘I did a little more work on Kerry’s supposed cure and found that it merely slows the disease. It does not stop it.’

  ‘Crap,’ Kerry snapped back. ‘He’s trying to turn you back Chad, don’t listen to him.’

  ‘I do hope that she hasn’t administered her supposed cure, Chad,’ Dr Reed said. ‘That would be most unfortunate for you.’

  Chad glanced sideways at Kerry. ‘What’s the chances?’

  Kerry shook her head. ‘The Falling always started with a fever and influenza–like symptoms, which then progressed to full blown necropsy, or flesh degradation across the entire body. I had the fever, it’s now passed and my wound is healing. Marcus still has the fever, but it’s easing and his wound is also beginning to heal. What do you think?’

  ‘They’re wrong, Chad,’ Dr Reed insisted. ‘They’ll die before the day is out. It’s attacking them still.’

  Chad looked at Marcus, back at Kerry and then at Dr Reed.

  ‘I suppose the only way to be sure is to let them live and find out, right Doctor?’ Chad suggested.

  Marcus glimpsed a flicker of irritation twist Reed’s face. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Please place them under arrest and then we can put them in quarantine.’

  Chad grinned. ‘Nice try, doc’.’

  Marcus saw the soldier whirl, a grenade in one gloved hand as with the other he aimed his M–16 and fired through the double–door windows. The glass shattered, the soldiers within yelling in alarm as Chad hurled the grenade through the broken windows.

  Marcus threw himself down alongside the soldier, remembering to cover his ears as Kerry huddled against one wall with her arms over her head. Chad ducked down, his body shielding them both as the grenade exploded with a sharp, deafening blast inside the departure lounge.

  Chad was on his feet in an instant, this time securing a plastic explosive at the base of the doors as he jammed priming charges into the soft material and then ran.

  ‘Get away!’ he bellowed.

  Marcus and Kerry sprinted back up the concourse, straight through Dr Reed’s holosap. Behind them, they heard the double doors crash open as the troops charged through in counter–attack, unaware of the charges Chad had placed. Dr Reed opened his mouth to warn the soldiers, but it was too late.

  ‘Hit the deck!’ Chad yelled.

  They threw themselves down as Chad hit a remote detonator in his hand.

  A tremendous blast of heat and noise thundered from behind them, a shockwave ploughing into Marcus like a freight train. He felt his body hurled forwards until he landed hard and tumbled across the unforgiving floor. Chad landed beside him, rolling deftly and bringing his rifle back up to aim toward the shattered doors as Kerry slid to a halt nearby.

  Chad fired into the thick coils of smoke, hitting bodies sprawled across the floor. Screams from injured men echoed down the concourse as Chad leaped to his feet and advanced, firing all the while and yelling over his shoulder at Marcus.

  ‘Move now, start firing!’

  Marcus stumbled to his feet, his legs feeling feeble as he staggered in pursuit of Chad. He lifted the M–16 and fired into the darkened rectangle ahead, the rifle kicking into his shoulder as rounds flew away from him.

  Chad dashed to the side of the doors and waved Marcus to stop firing, then ducked inside. Marcus hurried in pursuit as Kerry ran alongside him, the 9mm in her hand. They heard shouts from the darkness, more shots fired. Screams cut brutally short.

  Marcus’s eyes adjusted to the gloom as he stepped into the departure lounge.

  Several of the soldiers who had charged the doors lay dead around them, their blood mingling with dust in congealing pools on the floor. Limbs lay scattered where they had fallen, weapons still in the grasp of severed, gloved hands. The sickening smell of spilled blood and innards tainted the air and Marcus coughed, his throat constricted.

  Chad surveyed the carnage down the barrel of his rifle. ‘Clear.’

  ‘Is that what you call it?’ Marcus uttered.

  Kerry stepped in alongside Marcus, one hand covering her face. ‘You okay?’

  Marcus nodded, his eyes streaming as he struggled against the smoke and the sight of so much blood. He looked up and saw above them the roof of the lounge modified with heavy steel girders, stretching up through a hole in the roof sealed with clear plastic that looked up toward the huge dish outside.

  ‘Pay dirt,’ Chad rumbled and looked at Kerry. ‘You ready?’

  Marcus looked over his shoulder at the lounge entrance and saw Dr Reed still standing in the concourse beyond, his image flickering. Suddenly, Marcus realised what was wrong with the holosap. He wasn’t moving and he wasn’t looking anybody directly in the eye.

  ‘He can’t move,’ Marcus said. ‘He’s a static image. His projection equipment must be inside this building somewhere.’

  ‘You’re clutching at straws,’ Dr Reed said, appearing suddenly near the control panel before them but staring at a far wall as he spoke, his crude projection unable to interact properly. ‘You’ll never access the passwords from here.’

  Kerry stormed across to face him and held her pistol to his head. ‘You sure?’

  ‘You can’t kill me, Kerry, you know that.’

  ‘Really?’ Kerry grinned tartly. ‘You’re not able to move freely, doctor. That suggests to us that your storage unit is also here.’ She aimed the pistol more carefully between his eyes. ‘You think a bullet through your quantum storage will finish you off?’

  Dr Reed’s features flickered with panic. ‘I’ll have a back–up, in New York!’

  ‘Not once we’re done here,’ Kerry growled. ‘I’ll make it my business to be sure that when people find out how you’re involved in corporate genocide, you’re shut down for good. Password, now.’

  Reed’s jaw trembled, but he was unable to bring himself to surrender his future into Kerry’s hands.

  Marcus walked across to the control panel and grabbed the first piece of broken glass he could see. He then walked across to Dr Reed’s holosap and moved the piece of glass about and around him until he saw the holosap’s image flicker slightly, the light beams interfered with by the broken glass like a prism splitting a rainbow.

  Marcus turned his head and saw a low, slim black box lying on a worktop nearby.

  ‘Bingo,’ he said.

  ‘Genius, once again,’ Kerry admitted.

  ‘Get away from there,’ Dr Reed yelled.

  Marcus tossed the glass aside as he walked across to the projection unit. He felt certain that it would be attached to optical fibres, which would themselves lead to the holosap’s hard drive. Moments later, he followed a cable protruding from the rear of the projection unit to a locked cabinet nearby.

  Marcus stood back, aimed his rifle, and shot the lock clean off to a yelp of horror from Dr Reed. The cabinet doors buckled under the blast and Marcus leaned in and prized them open to reveal a small, glossy black box, a portable quantum storage unit. Marcus turned to Dr Reed as he aimed the M–16 at the box.

  ‘So, how about that password doc’?’

  Dr Reed was about to reply when Kerry’s voice reached them weakly.

  ‘Marcus, I…’

  Marcus turned, and his blood ran cold as he saw Kerry’s legs give way beneath her as she slumped to the floor.

  ***

  44

  London

  Han Reeves entered the building and looked up at the staircase above as the sound of the helicopters thundered ever closer. He was about to take the steps two at a time when he hesitated.


  Icon had said that the surgeon would conduct his work up there, but it seemed an odd choice. There were no escape routes from the upper floors, they would be vulnerable and exposed. Han looked across the lobby to where a set of stairs descended down into the bowels of the building: deep, underground, shielded. If it were he planning this escapade, he’d have chosen the basement, not the upper floors.

  Han hit the basement stairs at a run, dashing down them as quickly as he could and feeling the air turn even colder as he descended.

  The basement was unlit, but he was only half way down when he heard the boots rushing up toward him from below. A crash of gunfire erupted around him as bullets tore chunks of plaster and brickwork from the wall near his head and he hurled himself down on the cold, hard steps, just out of the sight of the entrance to the basement.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ he yelled.

  ‘Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up!’

  ‘Arianna’s in danger!’ Han insisted. ‘They know she’s coming!’

  A moment’s silence echoed around Han before a reply was shouted back at him.

  ‘Not our problem!’

  Han cursed under his breath as he stood on the stairwell, the SA–80 cradled in his hands. He knew that he only had about thirty rounds, and that although an extremely tough and reliable weapon the SA–80 was not ideal for close quarters combat. There was no way he was going to take out an armed gang in a confined space.

  ‘You think Icon will agree with you?’ he called out.

  ‘Icon ain’t here!’

  Han glanced back up the gloomy stairwell as he thought about that for a moment.

  ‘Then where the hell is he? I need to tell him that Arianna’s in danger. They know who she is, and if they want to they can find out about your plans here. There are helicopters coming. This could be the end of everything, you understand that? They could bomb this building out of existence any moment now!’

  A long silence ensued, but Han could just about hear muffled whispers coming from within the basement.

  ‘You could be with them!’ came the hollered reply. ‘You could be here to kill us!’

  Han shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  ‘You think I’d be pissing about talking to you down here if that were true? I’d have run and called the bloody cavalry!’

  Another moment of silence and then a rebel appeared at the entrance to the basement, a pistol held in his grasp and aimed at where Han was concealed behind a pillar.

  ‘Show yourself!’

  Han took a deep breath and stepped out into the corridor. The rebel facing him remained hooded, his pistol fixed dead centre on Han’s face, and through the shadows concealing his skull–like features Han recognised Malcolm.

  ‘There’s not much time,’ Han said, keeping his SA–80 pulled close in to his chest at port arms. ‘If they break her she’ll tell them everything. Where your camp is, your families, Icon’s plans, where we are now. It’ll be over before it’s begun.’

  Malcolm smiled, shaking his head slowly. ‘It’s already over.’

  Behind him Han could see several more hooded rebels, all of them armed as they crowded through the basement entrance to watch.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You think Icon is just going to leave it to the woman to end this war, to resolve everything? You think the government and that bastard St John will just put their hands up and admit everything, hand a cure to every citizen? They need to pay for what they’ve done and we’re making that happen.’

  ‘Arianna is stuck in the holosap’s world with no chance of escape unless …’

  ‘The hell with her!’ Malcolm shouted. ‘She’s not the main plan, never was! This is our main plan,’ he said, and shook his pistol in his hands. ‘Take the war to the enemy, and finish them for once and for all. So if the helicopters are coming, I say let ‘em!’

  A rumble of agreement rippled through the rebels as they crowded into the doorway.

  ‘Where is Icon?’ Han demanded.

  Malcolm shrugged and made a show of looking at his watch. ‘Right now, he’s probably on his way to blow the checkpoint on Westminster Bridge to hell.’

  Han gasped in dismay. ‘He’ll be annihilated. There’s no way he has enough firepower to overcome the military and police. They’ll wipe him from the face of the planet.’

  ‘Escape is not his plan,’ Malcolm replied. ‘If Arianna’s been turned, then Icon will know by now and push on.’

  Han stared at him for a moment as a sudden dread flooded his synapses. With a realisation colder than death itself he realised what Icon was going to do. The weapons, the camp, the attempt to get Arianna uploaded: everything was a secondary mission, a back–up plan. Icon’s objective, his true goal, had never been to resolve the situation peacefully.

  Icon was planning to force the government’s hand in another way entirely.

  ‘The Falling,’ he said finally.

  Malcolm cocked his head to one side. ‘There you go,’ he replied in a whisper. ‘They brought this upon us and they’ve kept it upon us. Now we’ll bring it right on home to them. They did a deal with the Devil, Mr Policeman, and now that debt is due.’

  Suddenly it all made sense. The apparent determination to make a suicide mission into the city was not one that would be achieved with guns or missiles. Instead, Icon was going to bring the government’s greatest fear down upon them and then deny them their escape.

  ‘He’s bringing the disease inside the city walls.’

  ‘Into Westminster, and he’ll destroy Re–Volution’s storage units and therefore parliament’s means of uploading or relying on their latest back–up. They’re going down, either by The Falling or at the hands of the people if they try to flee the building, once the truth gets out.’

  Han frowned. ‘But how can you stop the politicians uploading? The servers are under heavy guard now and Icon won’t be able to get in…’

  ‘The touch paper for that little bomb has already been lit, officer,’ Malcolm smirked, his creased lips catching the light beneath his hood as he jabbed a gloved thumb over his shoulder toward the operating theatre far behind them inside the basement. ‘They think that they’re immune to disease? They’re about to get a shock.’

  Han’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Arianna, her upload.’

  Malcolm winked one disfigured eye. ‘It’s not just humans that can get a virus.’

  Han gasped at Icon’s audacity, his plan a double stroke of genius. Hitting the holosaps from both the inside and the outside, he was more than willing to sacrifice anybody in order to achieve his goal.

  ‘Icon knew that she would be identified,’ Han finally realised. ‘He had no intention of bringing her back out of this.’

  ‘No intention of killing her either,’ Malcolm replied without a hint of remorse. ‘What will be, will be.’

  Han saw an image flicker through his mind’s eye of thousands of panicked citizens flooding the streets of London as The Falling entered the city, probably through infected animals released by Icon’s men, fleeing but with nowhere actually to go but…

  ‘You, all of you,’ Han said with a disbelief that he had rarely felt. ‘You’re their saviours.’

  ‘Those of us that survive any retaliation by government forces,’ Malcolm nodded. ‘We carry the immunity in our blood. Some of us will report to the hospitals and inform the staff of our immunity. They will then take blood and…’

  Han started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He looked away from Malcolm and rubbed his temples with one hand. As he did so he heard a faint commotion echo from the stairwell above and realised that somebody had found Myles. Han knew he had only seconds left now before they would be on top of him.

  ‘You’ll inoculate the population, right?’ he snapped. Malcolm nodded. ‘And how the hell are you going to do that quickly enough to protect millions of people against a disease that kills in days?’

  ‘They will suffer,’ Malcolm snapped, ‘and we cannot hope to
save them all. But many will live and they will carry the knowledge of what our government has done to them.’

  ‘And what you did to those who didn’t survive,’ Han snapped back. ‘You, all of you, will be either forgotten or left to rot in prison. You’re all as guilty as St John, no matter how you cover it up or justify it to yourselves. You’re going to kill countless innocent people just like the government has.’

  The rebels shifted, dark mutterings flitting like dangerous thoughts from one man to the next.

  ‘You’re done here,’ Malcolm said, gripping his pistol tighter. ‘Drop your rifle.’

  The sound of running footsteps echoed down the stairwell behind Han, Myles’s voice shouting out. ‘He’s the enemy! He’s going to kill Arianna!’

  Malcolm tightened his grip on his pistol. Han let his shoulders fall in capitulation as he sighed and moved to lift the SA–80 from his shoulders, turning the barrel toward the rebels as he did so.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Malcolm replied, ‘it does.’

  Han let his knees collapse, dropping with the force of gravity as he squeezed the trigger on his SA–80. The first round ploughed into Malcolm’s abdomen long before he could even think about returning fire and he doubled over as his legs gave way beneath him.

  The rebels, packed into the doorway, could not bring their weapons to bear upon Han past Malcolm as he fell.

  Han’s knees cracked against the unforgiving concrete floor as the SA–80 chattered rounds into the densely packed rebels. Several at the back turned and fled, but their comrades in front were sprayed with the rifle’s bullets that thudded into vulnerable flesh.

  Two wild shots went high above Han–s head as six or seven rebels fell before the onslaught.

  Han leaped to his feet and pain bolted through his knees as he ran forward. He leaped over Malcolm’s inert body and then over the pile of corpses in the doorway, scooping up a dropped pistol as he plunged into the basement and opened fire on the first movement he saw. Another rebel fell as rounds thumped into his back and his screams echoed loudly through the dingy, confined spaces as he tumbled onto the cold ground.