Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  ‘Night hunting,’ Max stated.

  ‘We’re outta here. It’s not safe here anymore.’

  Max struggled to get into his clothes, while Aya collected together her things. Aya followed him out of the door. It was a clear night and the moon shone brightly above the trees. Aya looked up at the shining moon and had pity for all the animals that were about to be blasted to death by the night-hunters. Then she thought of Hawkins and how Max had shot his guts out earlier that morning. She pictured Hawkins’s guts all over the floor and the sound that the gun had made when Max had held the feather pillow over his face and shot his brains out. Ajit was lying dead and it was her fault. She had killed him. Her knees went weak. The moon was looking down at her as though it knew her thoughts: her guilty, terrible thoughts.

  ‘What now? The car’s dead,’ she asked.

  Max nodded at Chuck’s truck.

  ‘We’re taking that. Just give me a few minutes.’

  She could hear him scuffling around in the reception. It seemed like hours, but in reality it was only minutes before he emerged with more than just the keys.

  ‘What do you need those for?’ she whispered.

  He was shoving two hunting knives down his trousers leg pockets, and another in a rucksack that he had acquired. A long rifle protruded out of it.

  ‘Insurance,’ he answered.

  She watched him in action. The soldier. He stood on the floor of pine needles in the moon-light. A soldier again. His combat trousers were stained with blood and his pockets were stuffed with hunting knives. His TALOS uniform clung tightly to his muscular body. He had acquired a veritable armoury on their killing spree. For one perverted moment, she wanted to have kinky sex with him. Soldier-boy. She remembered her forbidden nights of guilty pleasure with him. She would never forget. Guilty pleasures.

  ‘In,’ Max said, pushing the door open from where he was sitting in the driver’s seat. Aya dropped into the low seat.

  He gave her a look as if to say “ready”. She wasn’t. Ajit was lying dead (with his brains hanging out of the back of his head) and they had left a trail of destruction and death in their wake. She had her man, but at what price.

  They pulled silently away from the Lodge and down through the avenues of trees the moon flickered through the trees as they went. She thought she could hear it speaking to her.

  “Now you see me. Now you don’t. I know what you did. You can’t hide from me. Murderer.”

  ‘I didn’t mean too,’ she whispered silently.

  She looked at Max’s face in the pale light. Beads of sweat clung to his brow. He seemed oblivious to his pain. She touched his face. It was burning hot. He flinched away.

  Max drove Chuck’s truck deep into the woods and far away from the lodge. Beneath the foliage, they could make out old ruined roads. Shattered walls, were just visible among the trees. Max realised where they were. The old villages and towns destroyed during The Reckoning were there, beneath the forest. The vastly accelerated growth of the forest had been engineered at the CUB to cover the decay. Like most things in Utopia, it was false: covering a rotting ruin underneath. He realised (with a sense of dawning horror) that he had fought to retake some of these very same places.

  They stopped in a small clearing. Once it had been the main street of a village. They could make out the pattern of what once used to be, a roundabout. Between the trees they could see a decaying, moss-covered sign.

  It read: “Dead End”

  Max began to waver behind the wheel of the truck and it juddered to a halt. Aya got out of the stationary truck and went around to the driver’s side. She opened the door and helped Max out. He was very heavy as he leaned on her small frame. She struggled to get him into the back of the truck and collapsed exhausted next to his worn out body. Beneath the welded patch on his shoulder, Aya could see the wound throbbing. In the moonlight, he looked deathly pale. She had tried to deny it to herself for as long as possible, but she could see plainly beneath the moonlight, that Max, her protector, her lover, was dying.

  Chapter 30: Little Emperor

  Coney City: Sector One

  Morning: Wednesday 25th July

  “Emperor Li. They are at the gates. They outnumber us. Soon they will scale the walls. We are betrayed! What shall we do?’ the Emperors aid pleaded.

  The aid dropped to his knees, and lying prostrate, with his head down, at the feet of the Emperor, he waited for a response. Emperor Li sat upon his splendid throne: contemplating. He was wearing the attire of a Samurai warrior commander. By his side was a beautiful Samurai sword. The handle was embellished with gold. He looked down at the shivering aide and then out and over to the rows of personal palace guards that were standing in lines in the vast throne room. They waited patiently for his orders. They were dressed in the attire of Samurai warriors.

  Emperor Li could hear the roar of battle taking place outside of his palace walls. The orange hue of fires, spread across the darkened walls of his throne room, and lit up the faces of his warriors.

  ‘We are not finished.’ Emperor Li shouted at the snivelling aid. ‘Bring my horse!’ he ordered, and stood up from his throne.

  The aide ran down the centre aisle between the soldiers and slammed through the throne rooms doors. The Samurai warriors watched their Emperor with reverence.

  Emperor Li picked up his sword and slid it into a sheath that was fastened around his waist. He walked slowly down the centre aisle between the rows of his warriors towards the open doors that the aid had fled through moments before. His armoured, leather boots tread softly on the wooden floors of his throne room. The warriors bowed in turn as their Emperor passed each of them. Their black eyes were closed until he had passed them by.

  The noise of war was closing in on them. They could hear the screams of dying men coming from outside in the courtyard. They could also hear the rhythmic ‘thumping’ of a battering ram, hitting the massive, wooden gates and they knew that very soon, it would be the screams of their women and children that they would be hearing. The courtyard was filled with the sound of the hooves of horses clattering and pounding on the tiles of the courtyard. They could hear the fear in the voices of their fellow men: shouting, and sending orders in all directions.

  Emperor Li strode out into the courtyard. Fires were breaking out in the stables around the courtyard, and several loose horses were running through the yards in terror. All around them was chaos and fear. Two stable hands held Emperor Li’s horse. It was a fine grey stallion of excellent breeding. It shook its head and snorted at the Emperor. Emperor Li took its reigns and heaved himself up swiftly into the saddle. Other stable hands were holding the horses that belonged to the Emperor’s warriors. They mounted their horses amidst the chaos around them. A hundred hooves pranced up and down in anticipation. The air smelled of fire, horses and fear.

  The battering ram kept up its rhythmic ‘thumping’ noise. The gates of the palace began to splinter. Emperor Li took the flag of his palace on a lance and held it high in the air. His horse reared slightly with excitement and fear. Emperor Li held the reigns tightly and led the fiery animal towards the gates.

  ‘To the end!’ he shouted to his warriors.

  There was no sign of fear on his face, only the possibility of victory. Emperor Li’s horse reared up and then bolted forwards to the burgeoning gates. A massive cheer went up around the palace and the other mounted warriors stampeded after him, with their swords held at the ready.

  The gates gave way in a thousand splinters.”

  “WAKE UP EXECUTIVE LI. IT’S ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY IN UTOPIA.

  WAKE UP EXECUTIVE LI. IT’S ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY IN UTOPIA.

  WAKE UP …”

  Jon Li jolted awake: the heroic fantasy fading from his mind. He reached out and thumbed the talking alarm clock to the ‘snooze’ mode. It faded into silence. He was thinking that he may have to change the programmed message when he got back from the conference: depending on the outcome. He blinked his eyes in the
dawning light. It was 6:00 a.m.

  The dream had been very intense. He put it down to anxiety about the forth-coming trip. He stretched under the silken sheets, and felt her warm body next to him. He looked over to the mass of blonde hair next to him. Ellie was still asleep. He brushed her hair away from her face. The white streak in it reminded him of the incident on the tour. She murmured slightly. He wondered what she was dreaming.

  He sighed and slid over the edge of the bed rubbing at his eyes. He adjusted the clock’s alarm forwards by an hour to give Ellie time to get up for work. Sitting next to it, on the bedside cabinet, was a bottle of unopened pills. The label read: Dr Elinor Rutherford. Chloroproximal. Jon Li sighed. It was the tranquilizers that she had been prescribed. She had stopped taking them altogether. They had hardly spoken in days and it bothered him a lot.

  He was used to Ellie being talkative and happy, but since Irene’s death, she had become withdrawn and serious. He was thinking that since Ellie had used his sanctuary and left for Eden, to see Bridget, they had drifted further apart and he wondered if it had been such a good idea to let her use his sanctuary after all. He longed for the touch of her body again, but the intimacy that they once shared had waned since the death of Irene. He felt at a loss with her.

  He had tried everything to make things easier for her, but the awful news from the CURE Officers, that Irene had been the victim of a deranged killer, had been one revelation he had felt that he had to hide from her. He realised that it had been a futile task because the news was on every Info-Com in the city. He had known that she had found out the truth at Eden because her eyes had looked at him with a glimmer of mistrust when she had returned on Sunday evening. They hadn’t spoken about it, but he could sense that she was feeling hurt and betrayed when she looked at him.

  He had arranged for her to see a doctor and a counsellor but she had cancelled them He worried whether he should have insisted that she had seen them both. He had been annoyed with her when he had found out that she had cancelled the appointments. She had refused to speak to anyone about the murder of her best friend, Irene, and he couldn’t understand why. He only knew what the CURE Officer had told him they were victims of the Slash-Knife killer.

  His physician had told him that she would get over it in time and to let her talk about it when the time was right. It distressed him to think that no matter what he did, she still seemed distant and subdued. She had built impregnable walls around herself and he had no idea how to begin to get around them.

  At first, he had been glad that she had gone back to work, but he remained unconvinced that she was fit to return so soon after Irene’s death. She had been working late the last two nights. He had sent Rexton to pick her up when her shift had ended, but both times, she had dismissed him, and stayed on at the hospital to work late. She had offered him no explanation. She hadn’t returned before midnight and, when she did, she looked distant and haunted. She no longer looked him in the face. He didn’t try to press her on it. He wasn’t sure how to. The distance in their relationship was tearing him apart.

  He padded across the wooden floor to the shower. Behind him, Ellie murmured, lost in whatever nightmare filled her thoughts. Beside her, was an unopened bottle of the pills she had been prescribed.

  He stepped into the shower and set it to a full invigorating spray. After he had showered he put on his white towelling bathrobe, combed his hair and brushed his teeth using a neat device designed by the TAU. The device delivered precisely the right amount of specially formulated paste, which (as the label stated) “eliminated the need for a dental hygienist”. He supposed that Bridget’s husband, Brian, would have hated the device. He used his electric shaver (another device courtesy of TAU.) to shave and then liberally slapped on an expensive after-shave that had been a gift from Ellie. She had told him, when she had given it to him, that it smelled of success. He only wore it when he had important meetings to attend and today he was thinking that he needed all the help that he could get. When he had finished his routine he hung up the bathrobe, pulled on a pair of designer underpants, left the bathroom, and made his way to his sanctuary.

  He edged the door of the sanctuary open and stepped inside. He left faint footprints of water on the wooden floors as he walked towards the altar. A faint aroma of incense permeated the air. The room was in semi-darkness. He sat down on the mat in front of the altar and crossed his legs into a yoga position. He straightened his back and looked around the sanctuary.

  The hollow eye sockets of the Samurai mannequin stared down at him. His meditation of the last two days had come to nothing. His ancestors had been silent. They had offered no guidance to his current predicament. He sat quietly and took deep breaths in and out – thinking about the strange dreams of war that he had experienced before he had woken up. His thoughts went back to the stories that he had been told about his ancestors and his family history. He remembered his mother and a story that his father had told him.

  His mother, Yasuko, had been a stunning Japanese woman who came from Takamatsu city in Japan. She had met his father, Josh Li, when he had been working on an engineering project in Tokyo. Josh had taken the train down to Takamatsu city to meet the owner of the engineering project. His name had been Mr Kobayashi.

  Mr Kobayashi had taken Josh (along with Mrs Kobayashi and their daughter Yasuko) to see the famous Japanese gardens of Ritsurin Koen. Yasuko had been sixteen years old and their only child. Josh had sipped tea in the famous Kikugetsu-Tei tea-rooms, which were situated within the grounds of Ritsurin Koen. Josh had fallen deeply in love with Yasuko.

  When Josh had returned to America, Yasuko had returned with him as his young bride. They had set up their home in Virginia. When Jon Li had been born a year later, Josh had told Yasuko that she could choose a gift to celebrate. She had chosen to have a beautiful Japanese garden built along the lines of Ritsurin Koen. She had told Josh that it was to remind her of the love they had found. The garden had been full of Acer trees which were in all shades of reds and browns. There had been a little wooden bridge in the garden which spanned a small pond. A stream had trickled underneath it and spilled into a larger pond, which had white water lilies floating on the surface. There had been a wooden replica of a Japanese tea-room, which had been placed elegantly on one of the finely, cropped lawns. There had been gentle tinkles of wind chimes which floated over the lawns and through the Acer trees when the wind had blown. The scent of Jasmine had permeated the air on warm nights. It had been a place of serenity and love.

  Jon Li had loved to hear his mother tell of the stories of her life in Japan and how she had met his father, Josh. It had always made him feel happy. He still remembered clearly, the gold and silver fish that swam in the pond under the wooden bridge and how he had been allowed to feed them. They had been so tame, that they had taken food from his fingers.

  He could still see his mother’s lovely face so clearly in his memories. She had pale cream skin and jet black eyes. Her hair was as black and shiny, like the sheen of a rook’s wings. She wore her hair, tied up in a knot, with elegant clasps. What he loved to recall most of all, were the words she said to him: “Jon Li – my little emperor – one day you will change the world”.

  He had loved her very much. He still did and he wished that she could see him now: successful. He pictured his father Josh: now deceased. Josh had become a shadow of a man overnight, when Yasuko, had died. That was ten years, four months and three days ago. Jon Li shook his head and sniffed.

  ‘Speak to me,’ he whispered. ‘What shall I do?’

  He closed his eyes and waited.

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  He held his breath, concentrating.

  Nothing.

  A hint of a tear welled up in his eye. He took a deep breath in, opened his eyes, and left the sanctuary, closing the doors behind him. He decided that the domestic issues would have to wait. Today was too important.

  He went into the lounge and plucked an electronic tablet from
beside the crisply-folded newspaper that was lying on the coffee table. The newspaper (which was ‘yesterday’s’ edition) was lying where he had left it the day before. It was too early for Agatha to have brought him ‘today’s’ edition in yet. He glanced at the old newspaper. The headline was about a woman called Cherry Hammond, who had met her end at the hands of the shadowy killer. It was the same shadowy killer that had shattered the heart of his own beautiful partner, Ellie. He had felt sick when he had read it the day before and seeing it again made it no easier.

  Cherry Hammond had lived in a penthouse just up the street from his own place. He had cursed his own foolishness at leaving the paper on the table for Ellie to see. He had been distracted by the antics of Mason Katcher and the preparations for the conference in Eden. He threw the paper into the wastepaper basket. A picture of a young Indian girl on the front cover, stuck out of the top. She was said to be a witness that was wanted for the purposes of an interview, by CURE. He scrunched the paper down lower: crumpling the face into obscurity.

  He thumbed on the tablet in his hand, while he walked towards his dressing room.

  “Lecturon-Designed by T.A.U, Made for business,” appeared across the screen.

  Flicking his finger across the side of the device, he dislodged a small ear piece, which he fitted into his right ear. He stood in his dressing room facing the wall to wall, mirrored wardrobes. The mirrors slid back at the touch of a switch to reveal an extensive collection of expensive suits and clothes. Racks of neatly polished shoes fitted below the hanging suits. Agatha kept everything in perfect order for him. He selected his most recent addition which was a blue designer suit. He selected a crisp, white, designer shirt, which had an ultra-modern version of the ‘Granddad Collar.’ It dealt with the need to wear a tie. He hated ties. He considered them to be fiddly and irritating. As he pulled on his shirt and trousers the Lecturon began to play his itinerary for the day in his ear.