by Gary Denne
Pump
by Gary Denne
Copyright © 2012 Gary Denne
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form,
or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, companies and organizations
in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real,
used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or places is
entirely coincidental.
Prologue:
Central Park
The jogger’s footsteps relentlessly hit the pavement of the jogging track in rapid succession as she followed the path through the park. She was hurting. Sweat poured down her beautifully sculpted face over pale, white skin. A pair of tinted glasses protected her eyes from the sun’s rays beaming down through the tree canopy overhead. She winced as she reached a slight incline in the track, needing no further reminder that jogging in 120-degree heat was no easy feat. Her long, red hair was tied back in a ponytail, seductively swaying back and forth as she continued to pound the pavement. Underneath an aqua tank top, her breasts gently rocked in motion. Black tights covered her long legs and a nicely shaped behind.
At the top of the incline, she was beat. Her jog slowed to a shuffle and then to a halt. She leaned over and grabbed at her knees, gasping for air. She took a few long breaths. On her nose, a small device was lodged in each nostril, filtering impurities in the air. It was for such activities where a human would intake a much higher volume of air than normal, now that air quality had lowered to levels where long-term outdoor exposure was considered extremely unhealthy.
After a few moments, she began to recover her breath and observed her surroundings. She could see lovers enjoying picnics on artificial lawn, children playing simple ball games, and people leisurely riding bicycles with a dog or two in tow. Everyone appeared happily ignorant of the outside world.
In the distance, skyscrapers towered around the park in every direction, but here inside this expansive space, she was at peace. Birds chirped in the trees above, mixed with the laughter and pleasure of park goers. They were the only sounds to be heard. Yes, a summer’s day in the park was truly a moment in paradise—the closest one could get to the way life once was. And in that moment she felt so very, very lucky.
The jogger placed her leg up to a park bench, stretching out as she stood perfectly still on the other. Her flexibility was astounding, and her figure, divine. As she reached her hands to her slip-on sneakers, she glanced at one of the flexible panels in the top of each shoe. It was a tinted plastic screen, actively displaying her health and workout readings, updating in real time. She switched legs. Again, she reached her hands to her shoe and while there, tapped her finger on the shoe’s panel, this time checking messages as if she’d done it a million times before. A video message began to play on the small, but amazingly crisp screen. It was a handsome man in his early forties, together with a vivacious young girl, both of them joyfully looking into the camera.
“Don’t forget tonight, Mom!” the little girl said in delight toward the camera.
The man added with a coy grin, “We’ve been planning a few surprises today. We’ll see you tonight after work. Don’t be late…”
The jogger tapped the screen and the message quickly faded away. She lifted her leg off the bench and stretched upright with a beaming smile on her face, anticipating the night ahead. Bending over one last time to keep her muscles primed, she quickly pulled up from her position and took off down the track, beginning a slow jog before working her way up to the pace she was accustomed to keeping.
After several steps, a sudden swoosh through the air caught up to her and a high-performance arrow pierced her right shoulder. The jogger instantly fell to the pavement from the force of the impact, clutching at her shoulder in pain. She yelled out in shock, and at the same time, quickly turned behind her. Several park goers immediately noticed her cries, and though alarmed and panicked, did not make any attempt to help. From a distance, they watched.
Lying on the jogging track, a hint of blood trickled from her wound, slowing staining her top. She grabbed at the arrow, but it was well and truly lodged in her flesh. Taking deep and panicked breaths of polluted air through her mouth, she tried to remain calm, but the look of fear on her face was immense. The jogger scanned every inch of ground behind her, looking for someone, praying that this was a mistake.
Forcing herself to get up, she winced and got to her feet, starting to move again, as if a second attack was only a moment away. She began to sob uncontrollably. This time, her steps weren’t in perfect harmony at all. This time, she was clumsily shuffling along the path as she held her shoulder, taking only a step or two at a time before looking behind her in terror. Park goers stared at her. She was on her own.
From a distance behind this beautiful woman, another jogger was quickly prepping himself to take off down the track. But he was not at a park bench stretching, nor was he configuring his shoes to record the workout. As his wrinkled, sweaty hands ruffled through a standard-issue black backpack, he breathed heavy and deep, sounding almost asthmatic. Buried amongst park bushes, hidden from sight, the shooter placed a black, scoped-sighted crossbow down and looked at a portable tablet device on top of the bag. Known as a Quartz, he tapped at the screen but his erratic fingers weren’t as calm and cool as the jogger’s had been retrieving her messages. On the display, a throbbing blue dot tracked along a pathway of a visually beautiful and extremely detailed map of the park. He slid the device into his grey track pants and stood up, a sweat-soaked white t-shirt on top. He had graying hair, styled and slicked back from his face with a clean-white headband around his forehead. The unlikely shooter was a well-groomed gentleman, sweating profusely and in a noticeably trance-like state. As he placed his backpack over his shoulders, he sucked in several breaths of air through his mouth, as though he was about to dive into the deep blue sea without breathing apparatus.
Smashing through a set of thick bushes with ease, he quickly joined the jogging track and started to run. He was fast. Very fast. He sped down the track like a freight train, gulping in air as fast as he could while holding on tight to the crossbow in his hands. Onlookers froze and watched him pass them by, staying well back.
The beautiful jogger struggled with her pain like a wounded animal trying to escape a hunt. Several moments passed as she continued to look around her in all directions, terrified of what may happen next. She desperately needed to get out of the park and blend into the crowd on the city streets. She continued to jog, but it was a slow shuffle compared to the athleticism on display earlier. She was scared to death.
Ahead was a small bridge, crossing over the jogging track, leaving her with a short tunnel to pass under. She came to the entrance of the underpass and crouched down low, trying to hide from sight. It was quiet now. No one was around. The mood of the park had quickly changed from decidedly happy to eerily calm.
She leaned up against one of the park’s antique lampposts and took a moment to catch her breath, still sobbing and wincing from the pain. As much as it stung, she reached down to her shoe and quickly tapped at the display panel. It instantly came to life. Without delay, she made a video call. It rang. She waited for the call to pick up. Each second waiting felt like a minute. She quickly glanced back up but could only see trees and thick bush covering both sides of the sunken pathway. Suddenly, an image appeared on the display. Alongside her husband and child, there she was at home, happily smiling back at herself in a pre-recorded greeting. The three of them were giggling and unrehearsed. She immediately closed her eyes and looked away in agony. She coul
dn’t bear to watch, but she pained herself to listen to the greeting, as the out-of-sync voices of her husband, child and her own voice began to enthusiastically say, “You’ve reached the Hartmans! Sorry we couldn’t take your call, but we’d love to get back to you! Leave us a message!”
She burst into tears as the greeting ended, uncontrollably sobbing. She took a deep breath and pulled herself up, holding onto the extremely weathered lamppost for support. Suddenly, the swoosh noise came again. A second arrow struck in her calf onto bare skin, just below the edge of her black tights. She let out an agonizing scream, as she slid back down the lamppost to rest on the ground. She was hysterical now.
“You bastards,” she cried, “I have a daughter…”
She ripped the tinted glasses from her face and the filter lodged in her nostrils, letting them both drop to the ground. She could barely move. Her head turned slowly as she leaned back on the lamppost, her ample chest expanding with each breath.
Slowly, a lone figure approached her.
Taking one step at a time, this stranger was in no rush to help. Beams of sunlight reached the lone figure and lit up the face of the grey-haired gentleman, holding the crossbow down at his side. He stared down at the athletic woman, transfixed by her, as she sat there in the gutter of the jogging track, helpless and sobbing. He seemed to be excited by the beauty of this stunning woman crying out in agony. For a long moment, he simply stood there and watched her as he struggled to catch his breath.
Above them both, on the bridge that allowed foot traffic and the many horse-drawn carriages in the park to pass over the path, a few onlookers watched at a distance. There was not a single soul in protest of the conflict playing out in front of their eyes. No one wanted to get involved. Somehow, they knew not to.
The shooter was several yards away. He slowly reached into his backpack for another arrow. Pulling one from his bag, he loaded it into his crossbow, continuing to breathe in a heavy, strained manner.
The jogger sobbed uncontrollably.
“Please … anything. I’ll give you anything you want…” she wept before him, begging for her life. “I have a little girl… I have a little girl, goddammit!”
The shooter slowly raised his crossbow and fired. It was swift and fast. The arrow struck right in the woman’s chest. With a look of shock etched over her face, she clutched at the arrow and gasped. Gently, she exhaled what life she had left and fell gently to the ground. It was over.
The man stepped closer and removed his backpack. He dropped it to the ground and sat down next to her, hanging his head between his legs, trying to suck in air and regain his breath. Exhaustion had caught up with him.
On the bridge above, a small team of private security contractors appeared through the crowds. They were plain clothed—jeans, loose-hanging checkered shirts, baseball caps—but each had a navy bulletproof vest for protection, and a thick, black armband with the letter ‘M’ emblazoned in white. All had a tiny headset device wrapped around their ears and a belt of equipment on their waists. The leader of this strike team had a hand over his ear, talking through his headset, looking down at the scene. He appeared satisfied, giving an occasional nod of acknowledgement to his colleagues as he talked.
The well-groomed gentleman ripped his headband off, letting it fall to the ground. Reaching to his backpack, he dug around and pulled out a syringe filled with a bubblegum-pink fluid. He pulled the cap off the syringe with his mouth and spat it to the ground, immediately stabbing the needle into his leg, right through the track pants. Instantly, he sucked a huge breath of air into his lungs and let out a pleasurable sigh, a feeling of relief and euphoria at the same time. He involuntarily dropped the syringe. His breathing slowed down. He seemed to calm. He was becoming groggy now. Very slowly, he reached into his pocket for the Quartz tablet. Mustering the energy, he held up the device and aimed it down at the jogger’s body next to him. As soon as the device beeped in recognition, he fell to the ground, still clutching onto the device as his eyes gently closed shut.
Introduction
The world had changed. The path man had insisted following for several decades had finally reached a precipice. As if by design, a perfect storm of natural and man-made disasters culminated and took hold, changing not only the course of the planet, but civilization forever. The origins of this shift had been quietly brewing for many years; an ever-increasing and unsustainable population. A workforce made obsolete by machines. The devastating effects of a changing climate. Dwindling resources. Disease. The evaporation of the middle class.
If one was to look back on this period of time in the history of mankind, one could easily conclude that no matter what man did to try to avoid the oncoming tsunami of disaster, it was already too late. The point of no return had been crossed decades earlier.
The escalation in this change began with two key events. The first, and most pertinent in relation to the world’s troubles was the catastrophic collapse of the world’s financial markets into long-term depression, making any economic crisis of decades past look like a convenience-store bankruptcy. Market after market fell like dominos and instantly put the world into a state of shock and paralysis. Many governments simply ran out of money and shut down. And, as if this wasn’t enough, Mother Nature decided to deal a blow of its own, when only a month after the United States was left virtually bankrupt, the city of Los Angeles was struck by earthquake in the dead of night—the epicenter just north of Downtown, claiming lives in the millions, and leaving one of the iconic cities of the U.S. in ruin.
Whilst shocking, however, these two events certainly did not signal the end of the world. Rather, a new beginning. A new chapter. A course correction toward a sadly, much harsher and simpler existence for man. Although the changing climate had shown hints of what was to come decades earlier, a moment in time could be pinpointed when the evolving weather patterns of the planet began to take a huge toll on its inhabitants. Temperatures consistently reached extremes. Annual rainfall had plummeted. Sea levels had risen. Oceans had become acidic. And clean drinking water, an increasingly sought after resource. A resource worth fighting for. A resource worth dying for. For without water, the world at large already knew of the fate that awaited. By now, much of Africa had turned to dust—the Nile down to a trickle—and tens of millions of its inhabitants lie dead on the desert floor, an endless sea of bodies rotting in the harsh heat. Life had become unsustainable on the continent. And it was this simple fact, this realization, coupled with the mounting toll from powerful and resistant new flu strains, that made the world’s leaders sink very quickly into panic and lockdown their countries. The result was severalfold; the constant flow of global passenger traffic stopped. Trade was suspended. All immigration ended abruptly. Borders were immediately secured, and the advanced technology used to build the tamper-proof electrified fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border years earlier was utilized by those countries that could afford to undertake such costly measures. Other countries simply retreated and increasingly wanted little to do with their neighbors. Self-sufficiency became the new mantra.
However, as drastic and sweeping as these measures were in global thinking, sadly, for many countries, it was a case of too little too late.
As the last remaining reserves of oil were extracted from the ground, what little remained underneath the Earth’s crust was too logistically difficult and cost prohibitive to extract. This particular crisis would be chalked up to man’s doing. Not only had man seen oil supplies begin to peak many years earlier, but during those years, when there was still time to avoid an energy crisis, he had only made half-hearted attempts at best to find a replacement for the planet’s thirst for energy. At worst, man blindly ignored the energy crisis and continued to consume millions of barrels per day, happy as swine in excrement. Oil companies took immense pleasure in squeezing the last remaining dollars from anyone willing to pay outrageous prices. But of course, demand swiftly dropped away. People could no longer afford to travel vast distances u
nless they ran their vehicles on homemade fuel concoctions of vegetable oils and fats.
But all was not lost. News came of a possibly limitless supply of energy, developed by a group of scientists in the form of a highly volatile fuel cell, which, once activated, generated enormous amounts of power over prolonged periods. Dubbed ‘Ignite’, it was discovered almost by accident … again, as if by design of a higher power. John Maddox, lead scientist responsible for its development quickly became the richest man on Earth … and then mysteriously vanished, leaving behind a company bearing his name and development of the technology at a standstill. The irony was not lost on man; finally, a clean, renewable energy promising to quench man’s insatiable appetite for fuel witnessed decades earlier, but its development now in limbo, particularly since, along with its creator, all notes and research materials on the project had also disappeared.
The domino effect continued…
In a world that was still catching up to rapid and unstoppable changes for the human race, many industries and facets of life disappeared overnight, as though they had been wiped out with little more effort than the flick of a hand squashing a bug. It was an endless list of what was once taken for granted. The world’s fish stocks were depleted. Meat, particularly beef, was now a rare commodity. With the spread of new flu strains and bacteria completely resistant to antibiotics, there was no longer demand to fly tourists to exotic destinations. No longer the need to power cities such as Las Vegas or Macau, or light up sporting stadiums across the globe. And as for the previous several decades’ obsession with celebrity, fashion, and entertainment … well, that too had been consigned to history, one of many distractions that had been partly responsible for the reality the population now found itself in.