The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10]

by Johnson, Glen

  There is the main dome over the city, which holds streets, walkways, parks, and lakes, which were dotted with housing complexes and various scientific buildings, but that was just a small part of the underground bunker. Many other colossal chambers ran off the first.

  In fact, from the main city Zone 1, there is another eleven main zones with numerous smaller zones attached.

  Zone 1 is the main living quarters of the Adam and Eve finalists; the people deemed worthy of perpetuating the human race for the British – other countries have their own version of The Ark. The scientific section is also incorporated into the architecture of Zone 1, mingled in between the parks and waterways.

  Zone 2 is the artificial fields, acres of land inside circular interconnecting domes that create one hundred and fifty acres, or roughly the area of one hundred and fifty American football fields in size. Wheat and other sustainable, cultivatable grains, along with vegetables and orchards, are grown in the artificial fields that are lit twenty-four hours a day by millions of triphospor lights, beaming down with the intensity of the sun. These lights are fitted throughout every zone in the underground bunker, although they are regulated depending upon the need. In the habitable zones, they resemble a twenty-four-hour light and day cycle.

  Zone 3 is the food storage area, where enough dried food is stored to last two thousand people twenty years, and that doesn’t include the food grown in Zone 2.

  Zone 4 is the live animal section. A large quantity of domesticated animals, for meat, dairy products, plus clothing, is kept here, along with some wild animals in a small zoo.

  Zone 5, coming off Zone 2, is the seed storage area. Every known cultivatable seed, plus every Flora seed, is stored here. There are one hundred and eighteen tonnes of various seeds.

  Zone 6 is the military zone, where the army is barracked.

  Zone 7 is the vehicle storage area. There are army cars, trucks, tanks, and helicopters and planes, along with boats. When mankind returns to the surface, they will need transportation, on land, sea and air. There are also eight vast two million-litre fuel storage tanks, which have bunding containment dikes around them, to stop leakage. Also equipment to raise solar panels and wind farms once they return to the surface.

  Zone 8, protected by Zone 6 and 7 is where the artillery is stored; all known military weapons, including nuclear warheads and uranium and plutonium.

  Zone 9 is a vast, deep, natural underground fresh water reservoir. The area was expanded with artificial islands added. It is the largest chamber. It also contains freshwater fish that have been added as a food supplement.

  Zone 10 is the water purification plant, for filtering the reservoir. It also houses the sewage-treatment plant.

  Zone 11 is a massive DNA vault storing all known Kingdom Animalia, or otherwise known as Metazoa – all species of animals and insects that rely directly or indirectly on other organisms for their nourishment. Also Kingdom Monera, which is all bacteria’s and blue-green algae’s. And Kingdom Protista – all unicellular eukaryotic organisms, such as single-celled organisms. In layman’s terms, the vault contained every known living organism’s DNA known to man.

  And finally, Zone 12 is where the digital data storage vault is located. It holds every known medical cure and procedure, every known book, document, scroll, movie, and documentary – everything that mankind has ever accomplished, discovered, and created, or recorded since the dawn of man.

  Also situated in Zone 12 is Naamah, the supercomputer that controls all the information, and runs all the systems in The Ark.

  The supercomputer dwarfs anything on the surface. Tianhe-2 is the fastest known computer at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, but even that one is insignificant in comparison.

  Naamah runs at 38.9 petaflops, which is quadrillions of calculations per second. It is so large it takes up almost eight hundred square metres of space on three stories.

  Naamah is, according to Jewish tradition the name of Noah’s wife, also the sister of Tubal-cain, a descendant of Cain, the son of Adam and Eve. Whoever named the computer had a sense of humour.

  The computer is simply referred to as Naam. She is a complex, advanced, artificial intelligence, with face recognition, that can perceive the environment and act accordingly.

  The ventilation system is state of the art and colossal. The main industrial lift has four wide pipes running up the side of each corner, plus each of the other eight lift shafts that joins in a chamber just above Zone 1. From the ventilation chamber, it runs parallel under the ground for over a mile, spraying out like the points on a compass. The exit and intake vents are hidden inside natural rock formations.

  All zones are joined by interconnecting tunnels that have roads and underground shuttle trains.

  And a nuclear reactor four hundred feet below Zone 1 powers the whole bunker.

  The Ark can self sustain itself indefinitely. Two thousand people can live comfortably for twenty years, and that only applies to the dried food, and doesn’t count on the fields of crops, animals, and fish.

  7

  Echo stepped from the lift. Even though it was almost 3 AM the underground city was heaving, and would be until all the Adam and Eve finalists were securely locked away underground along with their support staff, scientist, and a select group of army personnel.

  Since the virus was released in Madagascar six days ago, the base was on high alert and working at full capacity. Hundreds were drafted in within hours after the announcement, to get the base prepared.

  It had been working on a skeleton crew for over thirty years. Things were kept up-to-date, with supplies regularly changed, but there was still a lot to be arranged, moved, stored, and set up.

  As Echo moved from the lift, along the street towards the train hub, where she would catch a lift to Zone 6 where the army barracks are situated, she marveled at the amount of army personnel and technicians around.

  Also, the uneasy feeling returned as soon as she stepped from the lift – the presence of the vast domed ceiling above, feeling like its weight was pressing down.

  She has been positioned here for just over two years. Her squad was made up of fifteen people. They ferried supplies to the underground bunker, along with three other units, which was a fulltime task.

  However, it was a cushy job; everything was relaxed and taken at a steady pace – as far as they were concerned, they had forever; no one truly believed the spores would be released in their lifetime.

  Now as she looked around there weren’t just a few soldiers and scientists milling from building to building, there were hundreds scurrying around as if their lives depended on it – which it does.

  Echo felt strange wearing a summer dress in the middle of England’s winter, and she still clutched her straw hat in one hand. She didn’t feel cold though, because the underground city was kept at a comfortable level.

  She saw Coco running towards her. Coco is the unit’s Intelligence Linguist; he was tall, black, and had the body of a seasoned athlete.

  “Hey, so you survived then?” he joked as he crushed her in a hug. He put her back down and stood back to admire her dress.

  “Jesus, Miss. Philips in a summer dress! I can’t believe my eyes.”

  Echo punched him on the arm.

  “Damn woman, you can punch!”

  Coco noticed how tired and withdrawn she was. “You go get some sleep; you look knackered and all pasty white!”

  “You certainly know how to talk to the ladies,” she joked. “And what’s with the racist slurs?” She was almost asleep on her feet.

  Coco laughed. “Racist? You call me, a black man, Coco!” he joked. Everyone called him Coco since his brother coined the nickname when he was little, due to his bizarre habit of drinking coco all the time, as if it was coffee.

  Echo was too tired to keep the conversation going. “I will see you in five hours,” she announced.

  Coco gave her another hug then stated he would see her soon, as he jogged off.

&nbs
p; The centre of the domed city was where four of the nine lifts were located – three in a row, plus the huge industrial lift used for large objects such as pallets of food. It was so big it could carry down six Challenger II tanks at the same time.

  It was a short walk to the train shuttle station, where five main lines connected the zones together via underground tunnels, saving space.

  Around her, there are tall buildings, some eight stories high, and almost every building was covered in foliage. It made for a pleasant view; and they helped in filtering pollutants and creating oxygen.

  The buildings looked a little dated, as if she had stepped back into the 70s. A few were updated and added to, such as the science block, the largest building in Zone 1.

  The whole city looked like a movie set. It almost felt like if you walked around one corner, there would be no backs to the buildings, just fronts supported by planks of wood.

  The shuttle terminal was designed to be practical and easy. Shuttles ferried people and goods back and forth every twenty minutes. There was only one train per line. The shuttle looked like a standard subway train, and was, apart from there were only two carriages, one for people and the other for goods, which is craned onto the flat truck.

  Echo waited for the train to pull in then stepped aboard. She had to wait for the flat truck to be loaded. Stacks of pallets full of mattresses and furniture was being hoisted on. She presumed it was for the other army personnel that would be drafted in. There were only three units consisting of fifteen people in each when she left for her holiday. There would be two hundred military personnel, plus fifty support staff living in Zone 6 when the bunker was sealed.

  There were a few new faces on the shuttle along with her, but she kept to herself down one end; she was too tired for introductions. Besides, she would be locked away with them down here for twenty years – plenty of time to get acquainted.

  The six new men, in their early twenties, ignored her. Most of them would be young – the younger the better, so when they returned to the surface in twenty years the army would still be young enough to defend the Adam and Eve finalists, and themselves.

  Wait until they find out who my father is. Then the groveling will start; she thought.

  She found it amazing that people would go out of their way to be nice to her. They even tried to get her to intervene on their part when they didn’t agree with their orders. As if she had any control of what her father did. Or some would outright ignore her, as if she would report any behaviour the instant she saw anything.

  It took a few weeks, when she was first stationed here, to gain the trust of her squad. Now they treated her like everyone else, and they were the first to step in if anyone treated her differently.

  The six lads were excited and loud. They were debriefed when they got the assignment. They knew what was really happening to the world, and they were going to survive it. Only single people, with no family were selected – mostly orphans and those whose parents are dead or estranged. They didn’t want any who would become depressed when they realized that every member of their family was dead. Career people are what they wanted – people who made the army their family.

  Each of the new arrivals carried a big duffle bag of clothing, plus one large container on wheels that could be filled with anything of their choosing.

  She laughed when she found out Coco’s was full of tubs of coco powder.

  The squad all sat at the Mess Hall table when they first arrived and talked about the contents of their containers, as if it would be some kind of hindsight into each person – which it was.

  The Captain was tight lipped on most of his contents, but he did state he had a bottle of forty-one-year-old Bowmore 1966 single malt whisky, which he stated wasn’t chill-filtered, and there were only one hundred and sixty-two bottles ever produced. After some coaxing, they finally got him to say how much the bottle cost. They were shocked at the one thousand and seven hundred and fifty pounds price tag. However, he pointed out, once they were all locked away underground; the money in their bank accounts would be useless, so why not have something we truly prize instead. He stated he would have a finger worth each year for his birthday.

  Bull’s container was full of trophies he had won. It also contained keepsakes from his parents and sister who all died in a car crash when he was seventeen, which made him join the army.

  Coco joked it was full of steroids.

  Jimmy said he had his Xbox One and Sony Playstation 4, along with as many games as he could fit in.

  They took the piss out of Spice – who was a picture-perfect image for the military, with his athletic, tall body, and chiseled jaw line, and perfect centre parted dirty blonde hair – joking that his was full of hair products, moisturisers, and makeup.

  They ran out of time to discuss everyone else’s.

  Echo was relieved at the time that they didn’t get to hers.

  Inside her own container were some photos of her mother, and lots of framed photos of scenery and people she had taken over the years stacked back to back. There were a few cherished books – even though every written book was available to download from Naamah. Also a little makeup.

  She was aware that there would be no factories producing anything for decades – if any of the machines worked after sitting idle for two decades. There would be untouched items on the surface, but in The Ark, if you didn’t take it with you, there were no shops to purchase it from later.

  She had a little make up out of force of habit, but it didn’t really bother her; she could go make up free. Besides, makeup had an exploration date, if it was too old, it could cause infections. She read somewhere that it could become rancid, causing oxidation, which would harm the skin, causing flaky dryness or much worse. Therefore, there was no possible way of storing any for twenty years.

  The shuttle jerked, and then started to accelerate. It started flat, and then headed down at an angle, down under the city. It headed towards Zone 6.

  The windows were dark as the shuttle sped along. It took five minutes to reach the platform in Zone 6. There was another shuttle you needed to catch if you wanted to carry on to Zone 7 and 8, but this was the end of the line for Echo.

  Wearily, feeling like she had been traveling for a week, she stepped from the train.

  The crane swung into action removing the pallets, and a couple of forklift trucks whirred into action.

  It took another nine minutes for her to walk the pavements to her block – Block C. She passed streets lined with trees and bushes, and grass verges. Buildings crowded in around her.

  There are ten blocks of twenty-five apartments for the soldiers. Each apartment is identical. There was room for the two hundred soldiers plus an additional fifty, which would be trained from the Adam and Eve descendents.

  Each apartment consisted of a front room with a two seater beige couch and pine coffee table on a rectangular beige carpet. There is a thirty-two-inch TV on the wall, which was attached to a system that is connected to the supercomputer Naamah, so there was an unlimited supply of movies, documentaries, and TV shows – pretty much everything ever produced.

  Just like the world that was now dying, TV was there to dull the senses, to occupy the brain, stopping people from having to engage in other activities.

  The administration debated whether to have TVs in every apartment in the bunker, but after they studied the latest reports, which stated – in England – the average person watched up to thirty hours of TV each week, and they realised if people weren’t spending that much time in front of their sets, they would be filling it doing something else.

  TV was; they decided a perfect control mechanism.

  In fact, TVs are positioned all over the bunker, in every building, and with large screens in public areas, continuously filling the silence with program after program.

  Studies showed that a person could be bombarded with advertisements and information up to three thousand times in a single day. However, the average person regist
ered only two hundred and twenty four adverts in that timeframe. Without even realising it our brain is taking all the information in at a subconscious level.

  The administration of the bunker designed this fact into The Ark, providing the TVs as a way of subtle control. Messages, information, and instructions would be passed through the TVs throughout the day and night.

  Next to the TV, there are four shelves built in the wall, for personal items. Also a pine table with two stools – to encourage socialising.

  The strange thing about the heavy institutionalised furniture – the coffee table, the table and two stools, the bed and bedside cabinet, the bedroom sideboard, even the couch and fridge – was that it was all bolted to the floor. She had no idea why. Were they expecting earthquakes?

  The small kitchen has a sink, a small fridge, and a microwave. All main meals are eaten in the Mess Hall, along with the other soldiers. The small kitchen was for personal use for snacking. They were given a selection of food items each week for private consumption.

  The bedroom has a double bed, a built in wardrobe, and a table with a mirror. The bathroom has a shower on a timer, and the sink was built next to, and joined with, the toilet, so the water you used to wash your hands filled the system up again. It had a short flush, to save water.

  The double bed was in case people hooked up and dated, or even married. They weren’t discouraging relationships – people still had urges and needs – it was just they wouldn’t be able to have children, unless they were picked to do so when they were first positioned here. There were a few exceptions.

  Every room was painted magnolia, and all had hardwood flooring, because it was hardwearing.

  Everything was basic and Spartan, created in bulk. The only difference in all the apartments is the number on the doors.

  All their clothing was labeled and bagged up each week and processed through the cleaning department, then returned within days. Each soldier had his or her army attire as well as work clothes.

  A standing army of two hundred people would be hard pushed to find things to occupy themselves with that was army related inside a sealed bunker. Each soldier also had other duties. There was plenty to choose from. Echo’s job, while locked away below the planets surface, was in the live animal section, in Zone 4. Her job would rotate around the Zone, doing everything from milking cows and goats, to shearing sheep. Also cleaning pens, making cheese, feeding, and slaughtering them for meat and leather.