Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029

by Michel Savage

  That fading respite lasted for but a second as their glowing eyes turned one by one back toward their vulnerable prey. I took that precious time to cut down a few of them with the rifle as Haiti and Thorn joined in on the defense. Then began the hail of dirt and chunks of rubble that rained down upon us, falling from the widening breach of the hatch doors above. Stray chunks of rock smashed in the heads of number of weepers who were unfortunate enough not to dodge the shower of earth shooting down the shaft. In a jolting lurch, the entire chamber began to rise; leaving the remaining mutants that had been pouring from the ladder to claw and shriek at us from the rising elevator walls as it ascended out of their reach.

  With a few final shots, Thorn put down the last of the wounded weepers as we all peered upward at the circular hole of the sky above us. Our eyes had become so accustomed to the dim lights of the bunker that we squinted at the enveloping landscape as the lift rose ever higher. We stood at guard in the center of the roof when it breached the surface plateau.

  A broken field enveloped by steep hills met us as the lift jolted to a halt. It was an odd depository for any survivors meant to escape Fallhaven. I had forgotten that the subway system had routed us far from our camp where our friends waited. As we had just escaped a covert facility, I could understand that the evacuation site would also need to be well hidden. Any building or complex over the elevator shaft could have collapsed and blocked the exit. It was all the years of wind and lack of maintenance topside that had piled up a layer of dirt over the hatch, which had been originally designed to disguise its presence from any satellite observation.

  Thorn suggested that we check the interior of the elevator for anything usable or extra weapons which could have been left behind, though it was ill advised to touch anything within the contaminated area. It would be several days until residual virus would dry out enough to fully die off; and that estimate was only a wild guess, as we had no idea of knowing whether this bioengineered pathogen followed the same rules as the original disease.

  Haiti hopped off the roof and we helped ease Kane down to the ground where he stood leaning beside the doorway. He stood there with a strange gleam of hate in his eyes. With a grunt of pain from his severed arm, he slipped inside the elevator chamber while Haiti was distracted helping the others off the roof. As the former administrator, he had access codes to the core systems control and had resolved himself to reaping vengeance against his captors. In his pain streaked mind, it made perfect sense to leave them all to rot topside and make his way back down back into the bunker, and be a man who was still in control of his own destiny. He had other plans, devious plans that Beatrice had only barely suspected.

  Kane had been a lowly subordinate to the supervisor who had been originally assigned to the facility Fallhaven. Kane was no mere grunt, but was capable of being shrewd and conniving whenever he felt that he was being passed over for promotion to the posts he sought or positions he desired. . The catastrophe had broken him mentally, and one day he just snapped. He simply did not like being told what to do, and was sick of following orders was ...and why should he be forced to do the grunt work when he could get others to do them for him? An opportunity to promote him self finally materialized when a number of the project scientists were transporting a key subject to the cryogenics chamber, and officer Kane took it upon himself to sabotage the test patients stasis apparatus when no one was looking, and quietly slipped out the door.

  It was of slight inconvenience that his treacherous plan had to happen on the community mall level, where a majority of the ration supplies had been stored, but it was worth the sacrifice in his deluded mind. By locking them within the foyer level off the subway system, in one fell swoop he had rid himself of his belligerent Supervisor and a majority of the bureaucratic staff and was now free to fill the empty chain of command as he saw fit. His treason did come at a mild cost while having to weed out the few members of Fallhaven that might expose his crime, and saw to it that they met the same ghastly fate.

  A thermal blast charge placed in the proper place sealed off the upper deck from the residence below. Kane then presented himself as their savior, and further elected himself their acting General of security. It was unfortunate that his wife had died during the original catastrophe as a victim of the outbreak that followed; and that his only daughter had been a casualty of the tunnel explosion he had engineered, which had collapsed to a degree beyond his calculations. Kane was a broken man, his soul black and poisoned; but his warped sense of honor was a lifting burden within his own twisted mind.

  While Haiti wasn't looking, Kane slipping inside the doorway and began fiddled at the control board to retract the lift. With a hum, the gears clinked and the others still up on the roof glanced at one another in alarm; wondering if the elevator mechanism was beginning to fail.

  "Hurry, everyone off. Jump!" Thorn yelled, as Haiti helped get the old woman off the roof. Thorn and I leapt and toppled to the ground, just as the lift jolted once. Glancing over to the lift doorway, we saw Kane standing inside at the control board, his face turning from a sense of glee to one of aggravation as the doors failed to cycle shut.

  "That little bastard, I'll..." Thorn trailed off as a dark shadow crept up behind Kane, its distorted features reaching out to envelope him within in its claws. The old man screamed once in surprise as the mutant bit into his neck, realizing too late that he should have checked the chamber for any residual passengers. He mashed his fist onto the panel once again and the doors began to cycle shut as he tried to wiggle from the grasp of his attacker; warm blood spurting from his neck.

  I got to my feet and took aim with the Centurion rifle, trying to get a clear shot past Kane, taking but a moment to realize that there was no reason to do so. Kane had been bit, the mutant gene now contaminating his body; there was no surviving that. Kane leapt out of the doorway with the mutant clinging onto him from behind and grabbed the muzzled of my rifle with his one good arm.

  "Save me!" he pleaded weakly, as if every last visage of his betrayal would be somehow forgiven. He grasped again further up the muzzle as I stared into his scared eyes, the swirling fear and desperation glinting there.

  Suddenly, the hatchway shut behind him and the elevator began to descend. Kane lost his balance on the loose dirt that crumbled beneath his footing at the edge of the shaft. I stood there for the briefest of seconds that seemed like it lasted an eternity. Thorn held onto me from behind, screaming something incoherent as time slowed. Kane's bloody hand gripped onto the barrel of my rifle as his body dangled over the edge, the raging mutant still clinging onto his legs, gnashing its teeth and raking red tears into his back.

  A beam of blue burned through his chest just as I released the rifle. Kane and his assailant tumbling into the darkness below as a trail of bitter smoke from his seared flesh trailed upward into the light. As he fell, the old man still gripped onto the muzzle of the rifle, as if it was his only salvation. The thick hatch door closing over the shaft drowned out the sound of their bodies hitting the rusted roof of the descending elevator far below. We scrambled away from the failing edge as the silo doors slammed shut with finality. While the reverberation in our feet took several long minutes to subside, we looked at one another with tired eyes, realizing with a breath that we were finally free of that maniac and the madhouse called Fallhaven.

  It still distressed me to think of all those people I had known, who had surrendered themselves to one man and forfeited their freedom just to survive another day. All that time they had spent enslaved and their countless sacrifices were for nothing. It made me wonder how many other similar vaults around the globe lay hidden like this one, and all those people it sheltered who were just hiding from the inevitable. What purpose did their lives have if only to end like this?

  I suddenly felt sick and hurled up what little was in my stomach on the parched ground beside me. Thorn came to comfort me as Beatrice and Haiti stood dazed at what had just unfolded before us.

  "Are you ok
ay, Caitlin?" Thorn motioned, with a gentle hand on my shoulder as I sat there on my knees; embarrassing myself with the puke dripping from my lips. I finally stood up and gathered my composure and we all checked ourselves for signs of contamination; any clothing or gloves with trace amounts of blood had to be discarded. The men gathered up brush and made a fire to burn the infected clothing since we didn't want this hybrid germ getting loose or chance what harm it might do if it got released into the ecosystem.

  Wearily, we gathered ourselves after making the bonfire, and made our way around the hills towards the welcoming sound of a stream. We only had two shock pistols with a few charges of ammo left. I was begrieved to have lost that energy rifle, but it wasn't worth the chance of being infected either by all the blood Kane had splattered onto its muzzle. Regardless, we weren't going back for it, nor were there any controls topside to speak of that could call the lift again. We were stuck up here in the middle of nowhere, and were determined to find our way back to find Roy and the others. The problem was, we didn't know where the hell we were or which direction to go.

  We had to keep an eye on Betty, as the old woman was the only one left in the group who was a liability and lacked the endurance for surviving on the surface. She had spent nearly the last decade being fed and clothed and using others to toil for her needs. That life came to a sudden halt with the end of Kane's reign. She had been at his right hand for more years than she could remember, having exploited the residence of the shelter to promote her position and control, just as Kane had done. Now that had all been swept away, and she stood there gazing out at the cloud filled skies, watching the sunset over the hills for the first time in what seemed like forever.

  As darkness fell, the night air was starting to become bitterly cold and they were ill equipped for this season clothed only in their thin colored jumpsuits. With no rations or warm clothing and only their wits, they had little chance of surviving topside for more than a few days if they failed find supplies and better weapons. An abandoned house or town would do well to protect them from the elements come nightfall, but they were at an ill disadvantage if they ran into a horde of Weepers.

  Haiti attempted to give the old woman some pointers for surviving in the wilderness and how to scavenge for supplies on the road, but it seemed of little use as Betty didn't seem to absorb half of what he was saying. At least the conversation helped pass the time as we tried to find adequate shelter before night finally fell and left us stumbling in the darkness.

  The stream we had heard echoing from the distance grew louder as we circled the barren hills. Below us, we saw what looked like an old mill at the corner of a lake, and could make out a road between the forest trees that sprouted along the riverside. The problem was this landscape and foliage looked nothing like that around the facility where we had left our friends. We inquired with the old woman if she had known how far the hydrogen generators were from Fallhaven, but she claimed to have little to no knowledge regarding the full extent of the underground network.

  "Most of the citizens who lived the bunker were wealthy enough to have purchased a spot for their families, or had either government or high ranking military connections as a guarantee for their reservation to reside there," Beatrice relayed as we made our way down the edge of the hill towards the lake, noting it would be wise to reach the cover of the trees before the sun fully set, "the rail system connected several such shelters across the country; some far larger than ours I was told," she stated.

  "How many shelters?" Thorn inquired, just as boggled as both Haiti and I were at her claim; admitting to her that none of us had ever gotten wind about such an extensive underground network.

  "Oh, and you wouldn't," the old woman snapped in reply, "there were over two dozen I knew of. These facilities are top secret, and not available to the common folk," she ended without realizing her flagrant insult towards the three of us.

  "So you're saying that rail system crossed the entire section of this country and its existence had been kept secret from the public ...how is that even possible?" I asked, just as shocked as my friends were to her revelation. It was a tall tale we would have not believed, had we not seen it for our own eyes.

  "Yes, quite so. Many intersect and there are parts of the subway system also extended beyond foreign borders into neighboring countries. The transport network was designed to function independently by vacuum pressure in the event there was a failure of the electrical grid," she answered, "There were actually several redundant power stations much like the one you mentioned, where you descended to gain access to the subway system," she added, "they were originally constructed over the past several decades beneath key military bases, crucial governmental facilities, even private resorts. All paid for by the clueless taxpayers for these black operations and secret programs that were funded without a trace of their expense."

  This really burned us. The common citizen paid for all these costly and lavish programs from their own toil and labor, but were never actually meant to be included to benefit in their use or protection. It was the elite skimming off the sweat and tears of others.

  "I find it hard to believe they built all that for the event of war decades ago?" I breathed, disgusted with what I was hearing, as we hit the tree line and cautiously made our way towards the abandoned mill.

  "That's what I thought when I saw the bunker for the first time, its entire underground ecosystem had been planned out and the years of supplies that had been carefully stockpiled by the engineers," Beatrice admitted, "but we began to discover that it had been created specifically for the apocalypse caused by the meteor, not some frivolous war."

  That admission stunned us. My friends and I shook our heads in disbelief. A plan of that nature carried out on such grand scale as this had been scrubbed from all web and news media sources so that everyone in the general public would never be the wiser. We weren't blind nor stupid; we had seen the hologram videos about the inevitable consequences and fallout in the event of international thermonuclear war, but it seems the powers that be knew of this approaching calamity and were only interested in protecting their own sorry necks. Apparently, everyone else was thrown under the bus.

  Their contingency plans failed on the first tier when the MN4 virus introduced itself into the environment. The government and military entities had only been prepared for heightened levels of devastation resulting from earthquakes or tsunamis from the impact. The electromagnetic pulse that threw most of the world back into the Stone Age was a quaint surprise, but the alien pathogen that spread like wildfire was the cherry on top of the cake. They had underestimated the responses required on a fatal level.

  Had the public worldwide been informed of this fate, many more might have been better prepared for the cataclysm that followed; but there was also the calculated chance of wide spread panic and unbridled chaos that could have destroyed our civilization long before Apophis ever entered our orbit. Humankind had a habit of being selfish and self destructive on its very own. Thus, on one level, the secrecy made sense; but on another, it was a complete moral failure. Personally, if it had been my sole choice to make, it would have been better to let everyone have a chance. Certainly, things would have likely fared far better than the way they had turned out.

  "Oh my, you believe in people too much, Caitlin," Betty declared, "from what I've seen in my long years, survival has no sense of ethics or honor, young lady."

  I didn't want to place any value in her harsh words, even when I knew what she had said was entirely true on many counts. Maybe I didn't want to hear the truth, realizing it hurt too much; so I kept it at bay. It was my one character flaw which made me hate myself at times. Like a bigot, I would ridicule others for not facing reality, yet did it myself most of the time. I just tried not to notice when I was doing it.

  As vulnerable as we were, we took every precaution as we approached the old mill even though the light was fading fast. It was widely reported that mammals in particular were the most susceptible to
the MN4 virus; so even the smallest rodent could be a carrier. I had also seen cases were wild deer had aggressively attacked people as if they had gone rabid. The truth was that most mammals that became exposed to the disease would pace about aimlessly or curl into a ball and starve to death as if they were in a paralyzed trance, having lost all concepts of instinct and self-preservation.

  Earth had been long overdue for a plague, but the magnitude of this disease was of the likes humanity had never seen before. It was astounding how many people died from committing innocent mistakes to outright acts of stupidity. Cats and dogs were one of the most dangerous of all the factors, since most everyone wanted to save their damn pets during the initial outbreak during the evacuations, which only managed to spread the germ beyond any scope imaginable. It was an all too common occurrence, that some idiots would try to smuggle their stupid cat or tiny rat dogs because they were small enough to carry or conceal in their bags, even though they knew it was a risk; only to end up infecting their entire family while contained in quarantine.

  Burn barrels were set up in lines to such camps. Every so often you would come across one while scavenging around; finding a burnt dumpster full of charred pets. The horrible part is that these poor animals were usually tossed into the incinerator cans while they were still alive, for fear of getting infected blood sprayed on the handlers if they were shot or clubbed to death. It was a horrible sound to hear, especially for a child who would see their beloved pet thrown into a glowing fire; its grisly cries as it burned would forever haunting their dreams. It was logical measure though, to fend off the spread of the sickness.

  Birds appeared to be immune to the alien virus, as did most every reptile; so doctors turned to those species for research and experimentation. Fish was a suspect carrier, which seriously dented food stocks in the early years of the outbreak when stockpiles of canned meats were being incinerated as a precaution. Enormous greenhouses popped up in an attempt to help curb starvation when the paranoid doctors and scientists instructed people to turn to vegetarian diets just to be safe. Although, as it ended up, they were just grasping straws out of desperation and didn't really know what the fuck they were talking about. The public wanted results, and they were thrown lies and misinformation in return, just to sate them.