Bull drove the truck down narrow lanes, over bridges, and through a steep valley. They passed through small villages with just a handful of houses. At first glance, they looked normal. However, there were always telltale signs – a broken window, left luggage, or an abandoned car parked haphazardly. Then, as the sound of the engine moved through the hamlet, the creatures would run out of the buildings.
At one valley, they witnessed a large cloud of spores lazily rolling up the hills through the woodland.
Echo was cold and tired. She could not wait to reach the safety of the prison and the warm barracks. She wiped rain from the masks faceplate.
Not long now, she thought; the prison was just around the next valley in the small town called Princetown.
She hoped Jimmy was okay and responding to treatment. She also knew her father would give her an earful when she returned.
Echo knew about the underground bunker. She was relocated there two years ago and placed in the Captains squad by her father. Up until today, she had never fired her gun in combat. Her squad simply ferried supplies to the large government compound. She never truly believed the bunker would ever be needed.
Coco had a banging headache. The straps of the gasmask were digging into the side of his head. However, the last thing he would think of doing was loosen the thing, not after everything he had seen.
Almost there, he reasoned. I can take it off soon.
Coco could not believe the day he was having. It was supposed to be a simple drop off and return mission – routine. Then they received the priority redirection to the university. One helicopter and one truck crash later, with fifteen casualties, with possibly another if Jimmy did not make it, and here he was. He could not wait to get back behind the thirty-foot tall, four-foot thick walls of the prison.
Just give me a hot cup of coco and my bed, he thought; every inch of him was cold and ached. When people first heard his nickname, they presumed it was racial and referred to his skin colour. In fact, it was due to his unusual habit of drinking coco as if it was tea or coffee. A nickname his older brother gave him when he was eight, and it had stuck ever since.
Lennie still had the tarp over his head. He had lost interest in the surroundings after the horde had attacked them on the outskirts of Bovey Tracy. He sat beneath the heavy tarp hugging Charlie while scratching the little dog under the chin. He still liked it in the back of the truck, but he was starting to miss his grandmother.
In the distance, the towering North Hessary Tor communications mast, bristling with satellite dishes and antenna, soared six hundred and forty-three feet into the sky, which land-marked Princetown from miles around.
Betty was hot – very hot, but she dared not pull the blanket off her head. She could feel the spores moving through her body; changing her. If they found out now she would be dumped by the side of the road, and Lennie would refuse to leave her. She would try to hide it for as long as possible. She was an old woman; no one thought it strange that she had slept since getting in the truck.
Betty tried to keep her eyes shut, but she could not stop blinking, and her throat was raw.
“Almost there,” Bull announced, just in case the three passengers in the back had never been to Princetown before. “Just over the next hill,” he stated.
And about time, Bull thought. He was hungry and cold. And once I get there, and get down into the bunker; I will not have to leave again for twenty years. I will be safe. And how hard will it be to look after a group of placid breeders.
The truck drove over an arched stone bridge. A collection of naked bodies floated face down in the watercourse; they obviously drowned in the powerful rapids up the river, while trying to cross.
The Captain was wet, and his left knee was killing him. The supply run was supposed to a simple there-and-back mission. He was meant to drop off supplies to the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, and return with twenty candidates who had been collected at the Naval College awaiting safe transport. Instead, he had lost fifteen of his squad and was returning by truck with four random civilians and a dog. He knew they would not be allowed to enter the Ark, but at least they would be safe behind the four-foot thick walls of the prison, at least there; they had a chance.
At least I’m brining Echo back to her father. I would hate to think how the General would react if I had lost her along the way.
Princetown is the highest elevated settlement on the moors – the unofficial capital – which is why it was chosen for the underground bunker. There were only two roads leading into the small town, and Bull was driving along the one that crested the brow of a hill, before running down into the valley.
Bull slammed on the brakes.
“Jesus!” Bull shouted.
Everyone, apart from Betty hiding under the blanket, and Lennie under the tarp, could see why Bull had skidded to a halt.
Coco and Echo’s view was the best, stood up in the back of the truck.
Below, in the distance, stretched out around the bowl of the valley was Princetown. It was a small town with a square and housing in long neat rows. The prison dominated the view; a large collection of tall imposing granite buildings set out orderly inside the soaring walls. Outside the fortification were numerous bulky warehouses and a large car park.
However, this was not what made Bull slam on the brakes. Thousands of naked bodies were converging on the small town, running across the fields and down the streets, all heading towards the large circular prison, as if being guided by a hive mind to the same location.
55
Doctor Lazaro
Dartmoor National Park
Below Dartmoor Prison in the Ark
2:38 PM GMT
“Picked?” Melanie asked, as the technician was scanning her findings into the database.
“Yes. Not everyone is automatically chosen due to education and breeding, there has to be a complete physical as well. They wouldn’t want someone with a heart defect, or diabetes to get through the screening.” Doctor Hall swung a chair around.
“Once Brigadier General Hay contacted General Philips and announced you had found a blocker; it was cleared to bring you and your findings to the Ark.” The thin doctor chuckled.
“No one seriously thought anyone would actually succeed in finding a cure. The centers all over the country were there simply for show, to calm the population, to make it look like the government was doing something, while the Ark was being prepared. Even though the Ark was kept on standby, no one knew one of the pods would be activated.
“Please sit, we shall wait for the scanning to finish, then you can check the document over to double-check everything is in place.”
Melanie was tired, hungry, and confused. She just wished the nightmare would end.
She sat on the chair and rested her face on her hands. Realization was slowly sinking in.
“The government has known for decades,” she mumbled into her hands.
“Oh yes,” Doctor Hall said, thinking Melanie was talking to him.
“It’s the worlds best-kept secret. For obvious reasons,” he stated. “Just think of the panic that would ensue if everyone knew what was happening. As far as they are concerned, this is just a pandemic, which would be over in weeks, like the swine or bird flu. Moreover, as they watch the TV, they believe it will not affect them. It’s just numbers and reports on the news.” He stopped to think for a second.
“Mind you, I think they would have worked it out by now. However, it is too late to do anything. Everything is in place.”
“You said all the governments know?” She looked up with tired eyes.
“Not all, only those who are allies with the countries in question, or who know about the pods.”
“You mentioned Clarkson found the first.”
“Yes, in the fabled Shangri-La, high in the Tibetan Mountains. He obviously didn’t know what it was, and luckily an avalanche hundreds of years prior had closed the valley off from the outside world, so when one of the sherpas
touched the black, pulsating pod, and released the spores, it didn’t spread any further than the enclosed valley.
“An expedition was sent to discover what happened to Clarkson and his crew the following season. None returned. Their location was left with a village elder down at the base of the valley in case of trouble. That group also vanished without a trace. But now the British government knew their general location.
“A third team was sent, this time they were accompanied by a group of soldiers, in case the last two groups had been attacked by bandits. At the time, outsiders rarely visited Tibet.
“It was a complete fluke that when the third group entered through the winding tunnels, out into the hidden valley that one of the soldiers was wearing a gasmask, due to suffering chest pains because of the high elevation. He thought breathing through the mask would help his lungs. It saved his life, and he was able to return to sound the alarm.”
Technicians were milling about; they had obviously finished their assignments.
“If you have finished, make your way to the elevators, and you will be taken back to the surface,” Doctor Hall announced.
A group of nine people left the room. They all seemed glad to be able to return to the world above.
Melanie found their nervousness odd.
“Archeology was just gaining ground and becoming popular. That’s when references to other pods started to make sense. The Egyptians painted images of it inside their temples and pyramids. The Mayans carved likenesses of it at Chichen Itza. It was also found referenced at Teotihuacán, in Mexico. At Angkor Wat in Cambodia. On one of the fifty tonne sarsen stones at Stonehenge. At the Puma Punku temple in Bolivia. In the Temple of Jupiter, in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. There is even a glyph of a pod in the Nazca Lines, in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. Even Babylonian stone tablets referenced it. And more recently at Gobekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. All the ancient civilizations seemed to know about the pods and inscribed or carved warnings for future generations.
“It was later found out, while excavations were carried out, that some of the ancient temples and pyramids were built over the pods to protect mankind and stop the spores from spreading. One is beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The second is inside the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán in Mexico. The third is inside the temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The fourth was discovered in a vast sealed temple cave in the Northwest Territories, near Great Bear Lake in Canada. The fifth is at Groom Lake, Nevada. You may know it as Area 51. Stories of crashed alien crafts and top-secret military black ops are just smoke screens to divert people from the truth. The American government has been studying the pod since it was discovered in July 1947.
“Four had been located by ancient civilizations, and sealed away beneath thousands of tonnes of stone. Clarkson found the fifth in Tibet, and a well digger found the sixth in Nevada. However, the ancient scripts and carvings described seven Seeds of the Gods.
“The first registered reference to a pod was found in Sumer, an ancient Sumerian city. The Sumerian legend, The Epic of Gilgamesh, referenced one on a clay tablet.” Doctor Hall seemed happy to impart his accumulated knowledge. It was so rare to find someone who had not been completely briefed.
“Nebuchadnezzar wrote about the pods, calling them the Temples of the Seven Lights of the Earth.”
Melanie was astounded that with so many pods in the world, that the story had not leaked.
“There were even references found in the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank. The Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the seven original parchments, called them ‘Seeds of the Lord’. Other fragments, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean, written on parchments and papyrus and even engraved in bronze, also referenced the ‘Seeds’.
“Books that were not canonized into the Hebrew Bible, such as the Book of Tobit, Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms 152, Jubilees and the Book of Enoch all referenced the ‘Seeds’ God had placed on the earth.
“The Book of Enoch, sections obviously never released, even stated the ‘Great Flood of Gods Seeds’. This, some believe, to be the Great Flood, which wasn’t water, but a pandemic that wiped all living things of the face of the earth, apart from those inside the Ark.” Doctor Hall was enjoying giving the hidden history of the world.
“The governments that knew the secret have had teams of specialist searching for the last pod for sixty-six years. A group of loggers in a deep valley in Madagascar found it first.
“The rest, as they say, is history.” Doctor Hall’s fingers were twitching, possibly his nicotine habit was kicking in. He was a long way away from where he could smoke.
“Bunkers started being organized when the world’s population started growing, and mankind started expanding out into new regions. It would only be a matter of time before the last pod was found by someone who had no idea what it was, and touched it.”
“Finished,” the man sat at the computer said.
“If you would like to scan through the–”
A loud ear-piercing siren filled the room.
“What the hell?” Doctor Hall said as he walked over to a phone on the wall. He picked it up and pressed a quick dial button. He used his free hand to cover his other ear, so he could hear what was being said.
“What’s going on?” The doctor listened. His face paled. He slammed the phone down.
“We have to return to the surface; the prison is under attack.”
“Return to the surface? Surely, we are safer down here?” Melanie said while getting to her feet.
The technicians who were left in the room were running to the elevators.
“It doesn’t work like that. Only those who have been chosen are allowed to stay in the Ark. They will be starting to get them underground within the next hour.” The thin doctor was heading towards the exit.
Melanie was jogging along behind.
“I’m not going aboveground if we are under attack,” she stated and stopped dead.
The doctor spun around. “You don’t understand, only those chosen have had the injection needed to survive in the Ark!”
“Survive what? You said there was no cure for the spores?”
“The injection is not to counteract the spores. Only time locked away below ground, while the spores decimate the surface, eventually mutating from one species to another, until the whole planets surface has been wiped clean.
“The injection is because the whole underground bunker has been fitted with a system that will release a fine mist into the air ducts, which will affect everyone who hasn’t had the injection. Once the Adam and Eve finalists, and their support staff and protective soldiers, have been sealed underground, the gas is released to kill off any unauthorized technicians or hideaways. Only a chosen few can survive the end of days.”
PART FOUR
The Ark
56
Noah, Red, Betty, Lennie, and the Squad
Dartmoor National Park
In the Husky Looking Down Over Princetown
Friday 5th January 2013
2:41 PM GMT
“This can’t be happening,” Bull said as he slammed his palm against the steering wheel.
It’s right there. Safety and a cushy babysitting mission for the next twenty years. Right on the other side of those walls, Bull thought. Sod’s-fucking-law!
The Captain just sat staring out through the windscreen at all the naked bodies running full pelt towards the large circular walls of the prison. Unlike Bull, who was selfishly worried about his comfortable future, the Captain was more concerned with the questions: What made them all come here? Is there a hive mind at work?
Coco could not believe his eyes. He stood in the back with Echo, looking down over the countryside, with the wide-open landscape marred by the running creatures.
We are so close. It is right there! He reasoned.
Why didn’t I get on the chopper; Echo mused? Oh well, it is not going to be as boring as I first thought. She scanned the hil
ls around the prison. The naked creatures were converging from every direction; like metal shavings drawn to a powerful magnet.
Noah tried to peer between the seats, but Red was asleep on his shoulder, recovering from a concussion. He could see why they had stopped. However, he was wondering why there was a problem. Yes, there were thousands heading towards the prison, but it is built like a medieval fort, there was no way they would get in unless they were let in. If he was driving, he would put his foot down and drive through the lot of them.
Betty was aching all over. It felt like the blood in her veins had turned to acid. The pain was making her grit her teeth. She had to stop herself from screaming out. She was blinking so hard and fast, that her eyes were raw and bleeding.
Not long now, she thought. Just get us to the prison, and get Lennie inside, even if it means leaving me by the roadside. Betty knew she was becoming delusional from the spores, because she could hear voices in her head. She pulled the blanket tighter around herself, and stifled a whimper.
The Captain formulated a plan.
The main prison entrance was an arch into a courtyard, with building’s housing the guardhouse and delivery point. The main gateway was double walled, and you had to drive through a squat building, leading into the prison, then out onto the main road that led straight into the main hub building that all the others fanned off from, like spokes from a wheel. The core hub building was where the main lift for large loads was situated for transporting materials down into The Ark.
“Head around to the far side. Get us to the museum,” the Captain said.
Dartmoor prison is the only prison in the country with its own museum. Rooms full of documents, manacles, weapons, memorabilia, clothing and uniforms, and information about famous prisoners, as well as photos and paintings of the prison going back to the year it was built, in 1806, to house the prisoners of the Napoleonic War and the thirty-two month war of 1812, between America and the British Empire.
The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10] Page 18