First Interview (Necromorphosis Book 1)

by CT Grey

  And I bet that was exactly what my little girl needed. It was time to find out what the new location could really offer us before we moved there permanently. So I pushed my hands into my pockets and felt my mobile’s rough shape against my palm. But when I fished it out I saw that it had no connection to the network. But that was just me. Not the other people. They were all too happy to use the mobile services just like they'd've done if we’d been standing in the outside world, not twenty five meters or however much it was below the surface.

  “Jesus, Harry.” I turned around and noticed immediately the two base-guards stepping in front of the C&C doors with their hands folded across their chests. They didn’t need to say it aloud, even though they did: “You’re not welcome here. Sir.”

  “Yeah, and what for?”

  “Sir,” the other one started. “That information is above my clearance.”

  I raised my hand and shook my head in disbelief. What had I done to become such an outcast in such a short time? Nothing. Seriously. And there was no way I’d compromised the investigation or base security in any way or shape. Instead I just had told them what I believed was the truth. But that had not gone down well with Harry. Or the shadow brokers, whoever and wherever they might be.

  Well, I shrugged my shoulders. It’s their loss, not mine.

  Without being able to call Nanny, I figured that maybe after all it wasn’t such a good idea to take Casey to the new location. Who knows how much they had restricted my security access. She wouldn’t understand why we would stay on Earth, when all her new friends would be moving to Site A.

  So I made my way down to sublevel three and stepped into the enormous lift that dropped down another level. And there I saw for the first time what the black budget money was really able to buy. It was in the brightly glowing chamber at the bottom of the gigantic cavern that was at least half a mile tall and probably five if not seven miles wide. The darkness was mostly displaced by the tens of thousands of lights that twinkled like a star field. But they weren’t random stars, not by any stretch of the imagination, because as far as I knew every single one of those lights showed a location of enormous spirals that stored whatever supplies we were going to need over the upcoming years if we followed the Plan.

  However, most of them weren’t ever going to be used on Earth.

  “That’s a quite a sight,” a man wearing a white hardhat said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Uh huh,” I said as I locked my eyes to shimmering light coming out from the portal house, and every once in a while it dimmed, as the logistic operators pushed another load inside the gateway house, and sent it to the other side.

  “They say the whole of London blacked out,” the engineer continued, “when they turned that thing on. Can you believe that?”

  “Really?” I blinked. I couldn’t believe how much energy that thing was sucking inside its glowing maw.

  “Yeah, and boys are saying that every single moment the event horizon is open, it draws tens if not hundreds of megawatts of energy to just to keep the tunnel open to the site A. So I don’t want to even think about how much energy it’s going to take to open the portal to Site B. Do you?”

  “Um.” I thought what he’d said for a moment as the elevator lowered towards the massive logistics and control centre. “Wouldn’t that be more than we have… on Earth?”

  “Nah,” the engineer said. “It’s not going to be that much, because if you combine all the power that other sites… you know the Americans, French, German, Russian and Chinese have in their locations…”

  “Yeah…”

  “Suffice to say that it’d be enough to open a portal somewhere at the outer rim, but not as far as the Saturn system.”

  “Now, that’s far away,” I said, as I started considering what I’d learned about: ‘The Plan.’ And straight away it came to mind that they’d had always talked about splitting the population between two colonies, and then stretching our supplies as far as they would go, while we waited for the situation on Earth to settle down. But how long that was going to take was hard to say, especially in the light of the new evidence of the minority groups were pushing us out in the wake of the apocalypse.

  It was the fringe event, which we’d never even thought about factoring into the mathematical models. The three zombie types had been all that we’d ever considered putting in, as the scientists had never even seen a possibility that the Mother Nature would be laughing in the face of their predictions. And taking in what Jane had started revealing to me I didn’t doubt that we’d heard a great deal about everything that was going out there. But even then we had no other choice but to embrace an exodus to another celestial body.

  “Have a nice day sir.” The engineer tipped his hardhat and left me standing alone as he moved briskly towards the largest Logistics and Control Centre I’d seen in my life. What if the people knew what we had done with their hard-earned money?

  It was a dilemma, one possibility that we’d always ignored, as the normal people had never been included in this agenda. As every single time we’d calculated another predictive model, they had been slotted to fight the war, and if they survived, we’d always expect them to fall in line and accept our role in order to save humanity. And the L&C Centre was a certain proof of that, since we’d always assumed that they would fall back in technological levels, and then accept us as heavenly saviours that would transport them instantly into the middle of the twenty first century.

  Or had we been wrong? What if Jane’s people ended up protecting them and taking over everything we’d left behind? I couldn’t stop thinking about that as I walked down the avenue splitting the L&C in half.

  She was part of the anomaly. She was part of something we had never even thought about. Never known about. And what was scariest about it was the thought that we already might have one or two of their kind living among us as chosen ones. They could be any one of us. They could even be any one of the engineers operating this huge machinery.

  Jane had shown me how resilient their race really were. So it was no wonder nobody had heard about them, because they were not only smart but they also extremely cunning. And therefore, if I was right, they’d already figured out a way to: “…outsmart us!”

  “Pardon sir.” A mechanic kneeling down on the floor turned his head towards me. “…did you say they were going to ‘outsmart us’?”

  “I didn’t,” I snapped at him hastily. “Definitely not.”

  The mechanic scratched behind his ear and said, “I think I heard it right, sir. You said definitely ‘outsmart us!’ What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” I said and pulled my badge out of my pocket. “So I would recommend you forget about it. You heard nothing but a mumble. Am I understood?”

  “Sure,” the mechanic said. “But it doesn’t mean that I couldn’t act on that case, and you know very well that I might not be able to keep my gob shut, innit?”

  I looked at him and saw straight away that he wasn’t the normal kind. He wasn’t one of the bendable types. Was anyone who’d signed the dotted line?

  “And then what?”

  “What?” He looked a bit scary.

  “They will ask: ‘what you really heard then?’” I said. “What are you going to tell them then? That they are going to outsmart us? ‘What does it mean,’ they’ll say and ask you to clarify the case. Do you get that?”

  “I might.” He stood up and pushed his hands into his overall pockets.

  “Yeah.” I smirked sarcastically. “Come on then, tell them.”

  “Tell who?” He frowned at me.

  “Them.” I waved my hand around.

  The mechanic rolled his eyes and the cleared his throat. “Who do you think I am, Sir? A stupid person, and if so, why would I do that? I don’t have a reason to do that. Do I?”

  Ah, I sparked a smile. “Good.”

  The mechanic’s smile curved down, he sniffled and then used a tip of his shoe to close the lid on the ground as the device l
ights turned from red to green. I shrugged my shoulders and then crossed hands behind my back as I continued down the walkway, looking around the marvels of the construction. There were so many things that I couldn’t understand. So many machines whose functions I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and the most stunning of them was the portal.

  I stopped at the end of walkway to marvel at its design around the shimmering energy-field that encapsulated beings and matter as soon as they entered the event horizon. It looked more complex than the CERN particle masher in the Switzerland even though I understood that it worked on same principles. But then again the Large Hadron Collider had never had as many resources to do what we’d been doing behind closed doors.

  “Sir.” The mechanic hurried after me. “If you think they are going to outsmart us, then don’t you think we should know?”

  I turned around and asked, “Who are ‘we’?”

  “Us.” The mechanic waved his hand around. “The people working with these things, without ever really knowing the big picture. But from what I can fathom, things can get a bit… how I can say it—”

  “Don’t.” I raised my hand to stop him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and its better if you know less than I do.”

  He sighed deeply. “But you don’t get it. We’re not dumb. None of us are!” Then he shoved his hand towards the portal. “We built that thing. Well, not us, but you know what I mean, don’t you?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about… us?”

  “The people that signed the contract to keep their mouth shut about these things. We had people on the surface too. Families, friends and colleagues. And when we started pushing material to the other side, we finally got a glimpse of what we’d been building at the other site over these last few years.”

  “Do you have a point?” I sighed.

  “Without us, you cannot function, sir,” he said vehemently. “Get it?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I do, but still, I’m trying to find your point, mister…?”

  “Just call me Wally, sir. My point is that it sounds highly like a piece of drama if you say ‘they’re going to outsmart us’, and to be honest, it’s not what you want to keep mouthing to the people around here, is it?”

  I felt hesitant to give him an indication what I really felt as I nodded. Wally, just like any other people as he said, deserved to know more than we had let them learn about everything than what we had been drip feeding to them all this time. Then again, I just couldn’t go against every principle I had become accustomed to over the years and start dumping information into him or anyone else, who just happen to come by to ask for operational information. After all I was a spy.

  “So in that regard, I’d say that you should let the people know about this, cos—“

  “Just stop there,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m not at liberty to tell you or your colleagues any details.”

  “I get that,” Wally said. “But sir, you’re not listening. The stuff we’ve built here and at the other side, are in direct danger if these whatsits get there. So, all I’m saying is that if you —“ He pointed me with his stubby finger. “…know what you’re talking about, and you know that we—“ He stretched out his arms. “...are the people, who you need to build defences against these what-you-call-them-people then don’t you think we should know more about this threat than what you’re keeping close to your—”

  “No, Wally.” I shook my head stubbornly. “You don’t get it. There isn’t any easy way to solve this particular problem. Trust me, please.”

  “I see,” Wally pursed his lips. “I get it. Okay. So… hypothetically speaking we are proceeding according to the Plan and keep a skeleton crew in this place, and then at some point, we’ll find out that there hasn’t been a reply from the ground crew. So we send in Search and Rescue, who find out that those ‘things’ have burrowed their way into here and we’ve lost everything.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, it’s probably going to be something like that.”

  “Bloody hell. I knew it.” Wally clenched his fist. “I told my boss: ‘those goddamn zombie pits are not safe, they’re too close to the facility.’ Not talking about the new ones we’re keeping here—”

  “Hold on a sec.” I frowned. “Wally, we don’t have any of their kind here.”

  “Yes we do.” Wally argued vehemently. “And to be honest, I was saying the same thing this morning, when they pushed a couple of them new what-you-call-them … biters to the other side.”

  I frowned. “They took Screamers to the site A?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Four Screamers, same amount of normal ones plus a couple infected.”

  “Oh my God.” I covered my mouth as I realised the repercussion of their action. It was as if the Authorities didn’t care about what could happen if one or all those undead monsters managed to escape the prison over there. “Wally, are you absolutely sure?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I stand behind my words, unlike some people…”

  “I need to get to the other side.” I muttered under my breath as I turned towards the glimmering portal. “I need to see them with my own eyes.”

  “Well…” Wally picked up his toolbox and pushed his other hand deep into his pocket. “Let’s go do that then, bossman.”

  “Um...“ I looked at him and then pulled out my mobile to see if I had enough time before Nanny would get upset about me missing yet another pickup timeline. “I can’t.”

  “Nonsense.” Wally grabbed my hand and started pulling me.

  I put on the brakes and refused to move anywhere. But then I heard loud beeps coming from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a large hauler blocking the way back. I raised my hand and tried to make it move back but the driver just scowled at me and slapped his hand on the horn again.

  “You lured me.” I glared at Wally.

  “Outsmarted sir.” Wally grinned and nudged me to move. “I outsmarted you.”

  “There are no walkers on the other side,” I said as Wally stepped at front of the energy-field. “Are there?”

  “There is only one way to find out. Come on.”

  ***

  I have never had such an experience. The moment I stepped into the energy-field my mind shattered into a million pieces. It was an experience totally opposite to accepting the telepresence machine carefully probing the field of your consciousness. In a split-second I was everywhere and nowhere. I was travelling through a tunnel but at the same time I was back on the Earth’s surface, but not only that, I was in space watching the stars glimmering against the deep blackness, before I realised I watching a bright glow radiating around Milky Way’s spiral arms. It was almost as if my mind was scattering around the universe. Then suddenly everything rushed together and I emerged on the other side.

  But the strange sensations didn’t stop there. The moment I laid my foot on a smooth concrete slab I felt strangely light. It was as if I had lost over half of my weight and was able to do just about … anything.

  “What are you doing?” Wally pulled my sleeve. “You cannot stop there.”

  “But…” I waved my hands around. “I feel so light.”

  “Tell me about it.” Wally rolled his eyes. “And I dread to think what you’re going to do, if you ever get to zero-G. A bloody nightmare that’s going to be. Trust me.”

  I glanced at him as I stepped aside and let the hauler emerge from the portal inch by inch. There was nothing wrong with it. Nothing had changed. This mystical portal had done exactly what should have been impossible, considering our current level of technology. But then again, so many other technologies should have been impossible, including the telepresence holo-drones. But they weren’t. And none were as marvellous as the exopolis Wally’s people had been building inside a five mile-wide crater on the Moon’s Northern Hemisphere.

  It was like nothing I’d ever imagined, when I saw the first glimpse of it through a porthole, as we
walked down the beginning of a tunnel, following the hauler. The tunnel split in half and I got my first good look at the city under the dome. And that too was just as if it had been taken from the fantastic illustrations that the NASA’s people had been using to demonstrate space-centres and off-world bases for human settlers. But they were nothing like what I had seen Russians planning back in the Cold War even if it seemed that some of the exopolis architecture tried to follow their whacky ideas. The city blocks were rising up to touch dome’s polarised glass ceiling, before they spiralled down under the massive platforms, which supported floating gardens, observation decks and peaks of skyscrapers that stuck above the gardens like a shark’s teeth. Some could have said it looked like the main city had been built on the edges of mining pit, but to me, it looked like a new beginning among the white walls, hanging greenery, glistening glass-towers and machines the Authorities had hidden from the public for so long time.

  “This way.” Wally jerked his head towards a walkway that went around the floating platforms at the edge of the pit.

  “Where we are going?”

  “Off site,” Wally answered. He pointed a finger to the apartment complex that overlooked one of the pristine central plazas. “I don’t think they would have given a couple of those to the biter lovers, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think they would have done that.”

  If the undead got loose in here they would had a hell of time getting anywhere near the living areas. It was the opposite of everything we’d done on Earth, where the Authorities had allowed scientists to build their laboratories in the middle of society. Here, they were at least separated by massive tunnel networks.

  “How did they manage to do so much in here in such a short amount of time,” I asked as we arrived at the half-finished underground station. “Do you know?”

  “I do,” Wally said. “But what they say about the time-scale is all bollocks.”