by Graham Brown
It went up at a thirty-degree angle, as steep as a playground slide. It was climbable, but with a crumbling soil floor it was hard to get good footing.
James scrambled upward, using his feet and his free hand. He caught sight of Bethel up ahead and soon heard the weird grunting sounds of the flesh eaters coming in behind him. The further James climbed, the steeper the tunnel became. At one point he kicked loose a bunch of rocks, sending them back down the shaft and hoping to slow the pursuers.
Seconds later he caught up to Bethel. By now the sloping tunnel narrowed until it was just wide enough for a man’s shoulders. The jagged walls of the tunnel and Bethel’s feet were all James could see. Only now did he realize Bethel had no shoes on.
“Keep moving.”
“I’m trying!”
Bethel was slipping and struggling on the slope of the steep tunnel. James braced himself and shoved the old doctor upward. With the boost Bethel got back on track, but before James could get moving a hand wrapped around his foot.
He shook loose but two more hands grabbed his ankle. They pulled downward. James tried to grab the wall to arrest the slide, but it was no use. He began to kick, pulling one leg free and swinging his leg violently. His boot smashed into the face of his captor. The sound of bones cracking and a sharp cry of pain told him he’d hit the mark.
Suddenly free, James began to scramble upward again. When the tunnel became vertical he found a rope of some kind dangling toward them. He used it to pull himself up and soon crashed into Bethel once again, who’d reached some kind of obstruction and was pounding on a metal plate.
“Open the hatch!” Bethel was shouting. “Hurry!”
The pounding continued, but nothing happened. The plating didn’t move.
James squirmed around to look beneath him.
The crazed face of the closest pursuer came into view. Smashed nose and bloody teeth made the starved creature look even more deranged. James fired a shot, hitting the flesh eater between the eyes. Its head snapped back and it dropped away, taking two others with it. But the others were crazed like animals in a feeding frenzy. They pulled the dead man down and crawled past him, squeezing and squirming around the roadblock like ants in a nest.
Suddenly, James felt a rush of air. He looked up. The hatch had been opened and a pair of hands was pulling Bethel up through the gap.
James climbed higher and was pulled through by another helper seconds later. He fell out onto the floor and rolled, just in time to see another man slamming the solid metal hatch shut. A heavy bar was dropped across it and wedged beneath two bars, locking the hatch into place.
To force the cannibals away from the opening, boiling liquid of some kind was poured into a funnel that led to a hole in the metal plate. Screams were soon heard. Screams that faded as the cannibals fell and backed down the tunnel until they were gone.
James lay on his back, exhausted and thankful. It appeared he’d made it to another abandoned station. Torches burned around the open space. Further away the track bed was divided off into water filled sections like rice paddies. On closer inspection it appeared that some kind of algae or fungus was growing there. James had seen algae farms in various parts of the world, as algae became a staple of most diets. Though how algae could grow without light he didn’t know. He guessed it was something else.
He turned his attention to the people surrounding him and Bethel. They all had grimy faces and dirty clothes, but they seemed somehow more squared away than the men who’d attacked earlier. They seemed angry at the intrusion but at least they weren’t licking their lips.
“Thank you,” James said.
“Who are you?!” one of them demanded.
“It’s okay,” Bethel said. “He’s with me.”
CHAPTER 14
On a wide city street in lower Manhattan, a group of two hundred armed men stood in loose formation. In the distance military jets screamed through the dark as huge explosions rocked a section of land that had once been New Jersey.
Here in the city things had finally gone quiet. Several riots had been put down. Suspected insurgent areas had been attacked without mercy. Collateral damage was high, but no one really cared anymore.
Despite that, the men on the street exuded a kind of nervousness and desire to get moving, as if they were missing out on the action. Beside them rested a long line of four-wheel drive vehicles and armored personnel carriers. The APCs were mostly empty now. Drivers and gunners only. Hitched to the back end of each one were empty flatbeds with fencing around the edges. They looked like cattle cars.
A burly man with a patchy beard climbed up onto one of the 4x4 trucks. He was known as Porter. He struggled with a limp and grunted as he reached the roof. A long row of tattoos down his right arm showed his allegiance to a mercenary band run by Lucien’s family and the battles he’d fought in. He was considered the equivalent of a platoon leader.
Looking out on the motley group assembled before him, he raised the rifle in his hand and fired a shot into the air.
The sharp crack brought the men to attention. They ceased their conversations and turned his way.
“Listen up,” he shouted. “You all know why we’re here. We gave ‘em less than a thousand for the last shipment. But we got the green light now. You boys fill up these trucks and there’ll be bonuses for everyone.”
A roar went up from the mercenaries.
“What if we run into trouble?” someone shouted.
At that moment a huge explosion went off down the block, blowing a hole in the concrete wall that sealed the old subway tunnel.
“Waste anyone who’s stupid enough to challenge you,” Porter shouted. “But once we deal with the primary resistance, we want everyone else alive.”
The men turned and readied their weapons. A mix of rifles, pistols and shotguns.
“Not exactly crack troops, Porter.”
The comment came from the APC’s driver. A friend of Porter’s. Part of his outfit for years. The way the mercenaries worked, there were core groups who stuck together and freelancers who were gathered up for jobs here and there and let go when the tasks were done. The men in the ragged formation, marching toward the gaping hole that led to the underground, were all freelancers.
“Doesn’t matter,” Porter said. He pulled a tarp off a large weapon mounted to the top of the APC. It resembled a small satellite dish with a long barrel protruding from the center. Heavy cabling suggested it was a directed energy weapon. “With this, we can put everyone in our path on the ground. By the time they wake up, we’ll have ‘em trussed up and ready for transport.”
The driver smiled, turned the ignition and the big engine rumbled to life.
Deep in the tunnels, James sat beside a fire as a group of women roasted rats on a spit, basting them with some kind of juice. Beside him several kids waited eagerly for their supper. The smell alone turned his stomach but he tried not to be obvious.
On the other side of the platform across a narrow bridge, Bethel was discussing things with some of the men. By the tone of their discussions and their sharp glances that came his way, he figured his presence here was part of the conversation.
With the cooked rats being peeled off the spit and the kids eating, James had had enough. He got up, crossed the bridge and made his way to the small group.
“I can’t wait any longer,” he said. “You need to take me out of here.”
“No good,” one of the men told him. “Fighting up top.”
“That’s half the reason I need to get back there.”
“So you can lead them back to us?” the man snapped.
“Trust me,” James said. “This is the last place I ever want to see again.”
“You don’t understand,” Bethel added. “People have been vanishing. Entire clans. All their things left behind.”
James was tired of this, but before he could say something a strange noise echoed down the tunnel toward them. As the sound rumbled through the station, James could feel i
t in his bones, like a deep, electronic buzz.
“What the hell is that?”
An instant later, a short burst of gunfire sounded off far up the tunnel, and several people came racing down it charging headlong into the station. Two women, three men, a couple of kids.
“Run!” one of them shouted.
The strange electronic distortion sounded again and a wave of blue light traveled down the tunnel, illuminating the walls in an odd pattern like the reflections from a lighted pool at night.
When the distortion reached the station it spread out and surged though the station like an explosion, but there was no fire or heat.
James managed to turn away, but the wave hit him and he felt all his muscles seize up simultaneously. A ringing in his ears went straight to his brain. He took a half step and stumbled, landing face first in the algae pond.
Some part of his mind recognized the weapon and its effects on his central nervous system. But it was too little too late and he began to sink.
As he floated downward through the muck, a hand grabbed him and pulled him back, hoisting him up and out of the water. It was Bethel, who’d been shielded from the blast by the other men. He pulled James up onto the platform.
“Can you stand?”
James managed to stand, took a few steps, and then tumbled to the ground again. Splayed out on the platform, he looked for his gun.
“Come on!” Bethel shouted, trying to haul James to his feet again. James stretched toward the algae pond, realizing the pistol had fallen from his grip and dropped into the muck at the bottom.
Before he could touch the water, Bethel dragged him back and pulled him to his feet again. They began to stumble forward together.
At the same moment, the deep rumbling sound began to emanate from the tunnel once again, like the shriek of some wild beast. As this call rang out, the blue wave of light surged forward, emerged from the tunnel, and mercilessly ran them down.
CHAPTER 15
Olympia Settlement, Mars
In a large control center in the half finished city of Olympia, newly appointed Governor Cassini was reviewing a message from Earth. It came from Lucien Rex himself. Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, it took nine full minutes for the message to reach him. That meant communications were less of a two way street and more of a question and answer session.
The first part of the message detailed the situation on Earth which seemed to be coming under Lucien’s control. The second part indicated that a large batch of new laborers would soon be arriving.
“Four transports are lifting off tonight. You’ll have ten thousand new workers on hand in thirty days. Put them to the task immediately. The first wave of the Cartel families will be following sixty days hence. They expect the city to be finished, and more importantly the other Core Units, shield generators and the additional atmosphere processors to be up and running. While some allowances are to be made, progress must be increased exponentially.”
As Cassini listened, he stole a glance through the floor to ceiling window and gazed at the oval structure a few blocks away. The concrete housing contained the Core Unit: the main fusion reactor, the magnetic field generator that protected Olympia and the green fields around it from the deadly solar radiation.
Unlike Earth, Mars had no natural magnetic field, no north and south magnetic poles and as a result the radiation hitting the planet was enough to kill and sterilize anything known to man. The Core Unit changed that, it created what they called the Green Zone, an area of a hundred square miles where the incoming ultraviolet solar radiation was deflected and prevented from hitting the surface.
Within the Green Zone, people could walk in the daylight unprotected and not be burned, crops could be grown and livestock could graze. But while the Green Zone around Olympia was starting to resemble an earthly paradise in some ways, the rest of the planet was still barren. If Mars was to become what President Collins had wanted—or what Lucien Rex wanted now—additional Core Units had to be built. The ultimate goal was a planet-wide intersecting network that would allow all of Mars to look like Eden.
For now that was the most difficult task. Out where the new Core Units and shield generators were being constructed it was like the harshest of high deserts. Incredibly hot in the direct sun, bitterly cold in the dark.
Out there work could only be accomplished after sunset, when the double dose of solar radiation gave way to the grey twilight of Solaris Array. But even that had its difficulties. After the mirrors of the array went below the horizon, frost gripped the planet’s surface almost instantly and frigid temperatures rushed in.
Laboring in such harsh conditions took its toll and the workers didn’t last very long.
“The new Core Units and the shield generators must be the priority,” Cassini told the adjutant. “Considering how the workers drop like flies we’d better overpopulate those camps to account for the attrition.”
The adjutant took notes and nodded. “Maybe we should send the healthiest of the new arrivals out there,” he suggested.
“Excellent idea,” Cassini said. “Round up the medical teams and have them screen and document the new laborers. We’re going to need a way to clear them for health threats and more importantly to keep track of them. But they can also grade the strength and vitality of the new arrivals so we can ship them to the appropriate location.”
The intercom buzzed on Hannah Ankaris’s desk. She ignored it for a moment, stunned by what she was seeing on the news feed from Earth. It showed a vehicle burning beneath one of the highways. It claimed the wreckage belonged to James Collins. The news was confirming his death at the hands of the terrorists.
Her heart felt as if it had frozen for a moment, skipping a few beats before beginning once again.
A year or so before, she’d been in a relationship with James. A contrived relationship that slowly became for her part love, part duty.
For his part, she was never sure if James loved her back or if he just enjoyed the fact that she was an outspoken critic of his father, the president. What he’d never known was that Hannah worked from the president’s own intelligence service. She was a deep cover agent with no official position.
In his effort to survive, President Collins had long ago set hundreds of agents in covers that made them appear to be voices of the opposition. Some staged rallies, others became members of parliament and even important figures in the opposition parties.
Hannah’s position was more passive. A decorated surgeon, she spoke out from her position as an opponent of the wars. At one point she was directed to make contact with James.
The president claimed it was for his son’s own safety, but Hannah could see the distrust between the two. She knew her real mission was to see if James could be counted on. Over the course of a year she determined that he was utterly loyal, despite the simmering animosity between the two men and the almost pathological need to argue. That confirmed, she’d been ordered to Mars.
She did as she was told, but left knowing her feelings for James had become more real than fabricated. Staring at the photo of the wreckage, those feelings came pouring back.
She couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle it was, there wasn’t enough left of it to decide, but the explosion had obviously been massive. Huge sections of the building behind it had been blasted away. Whatever had been used on that vehicle, someone had left no room for doubt.
She looked away. Her heart was breaking; her mind was reeling. So much had happened so rapidly, but this was the worst yet. She took a deep breath and suppressed her feelings. She had to hide them.
Looking back, she tapped the screen and watched the next segment of the broadcast. It followed President Collins as he toured what remained of the Fortress. His hands and arms were bandaged from what the announcer said was third degree burns, one arm was in a sling, but he was alive. He walked with a limp and then turned to give a speech. He vowed revenge and punishment for the terrorists and murderers. He promised a
return to order for the people of Earth.
She stared at his face, freezing the picture and zooming in on him. It looked like him, it sounded like him, but something was wrong. The words he spoke were angry but the expression on his face was blank. Either he was more injured than the government was letting on or…
She began to think about the list of suspected individuals she’d helped Cassini and his thugs locate and round up. Some of them seemed to be random names. A few had been selected because their access to or knowledge of explosives and weapons made them possible threats, but many of them, too many in her estimation, were loyal supporters of the president. He couldn’t possibly suspect that many spies had infiltrated his most important project, could he?
The intercom buzzed again, insistently, and she finally answered. “This is Doctor Ankaris.”
“Alvin Davis is here to see you, Doctor.”
“Send him in.”
As she waited for Davis, her eyes went back to the news feed and the injured president. Something was wrong, she thought. Something was very wrong.
CHAPTER 16
Ten days later, Hannah found herself moving through one of the maintenance hallways near the west side of the city’s sprawling architecture. She passed the work bays and the fabrications shops and storehouses of parts and supplies. At the end of the hall she dropped down a ladder and came to another hallway. It was dimly lit and the sides were cluttered with unused equipment and spare parts.
She was alone and feeling sick to her stomach. She kept her hands at her sides to keep them from shaking. The last ten days had been a nightmare. No contact from Earth, no information except the news reports and a small bit of anecdotal talk that trickled down from Cassini.