The NEXT Apocalypse (Book 2): AFTER Life: Purgatory

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “With enough personnel, you can surround a little Afghan village,” Alphonse said.

  “Not like Toronto,” Tom said.

  “When the wind was right, we released the aerosol one night,” Alphonse said, “The next morning, a few survivors ran out ahead of a bunch of zombies. They came out of the village at first light but the uninfected didn’t get far.”

  “At first, it was just like in the movies,” Jerry said.

  “At second, it turned into a shit show,” Tom added.

  “The operation was going quite well until the women and children started running at the line,” Alphonse said.

  “What happened?” Shelly asked.

  The LAV commander said nothing. He stared at me.

  After a moment, Tom blurted, “You know what happened! We held the line, as ordered. By then, we didn’t have a choice, anyway. Couldn’t risk letting anyone out of the quarantine zone.”

  “Their attack wasn’t tactical,” Jerry said, “not then. They just ran at us. It should have been easy to lead the zombies away. Noise was how we controlled their movements then, as much as you can control a dead head, anyway.”

  “I’ve seen the video,” Thomas said. “I wanted to scrap the project but we thought we could fix it. Aside from the unintended casualties — ”

  “Aside from the kids,” Jerry said.

  Tom bobbed his head. “They acted like wild animals. They didn’t run and hide. They attacked each other in the village and whoever was left in the morning attacked the forces around the perimeter.”

  “So you’re saying the infected shouldn’t be able to plan at all,” I concluded. “But they do.”

  “During the human trial, the subjects demonstrated absolutely no capacity for chronesthesia,” my boss said.

  “Talk English, Doctor,” Shelly demanded.

  “Animals don’t have much for memories,” Thomas explained. “They don’t plan for the future. They live in the now. That’s what our tests suggested about those carrying Picasso. They demonstrated some pack mentality but that was about it.”

  “Tell me more about the pack mentality,” I said.

  “I just read the reports. If Hamish Allen were here, he could— ”

  “I can tell you,” Alphonse said. “They tend to go for the weakest and smallest first. Sometimes they’ll just go for the closest victim. They seemed to play follow the leader, like they somehow knew which was the alpha. They followed the strongest people so athletic folks seemed to lead the way.”

  “If a dead head is mortally wounded or too weak, sometimes they’ll get eaten by their own,” Jerry said. “I saw that happen right in front of me.”

  “Those reports were inconclusive,” Thomas objected.

  Jerry was near tears. “I was there, Dr. Dill. I saw your new toy at work. On our side of the battle, we had a lot of closed caskets going home that day. We couldn’t let the families know that their boys didn’t die of gunshot wounds. Some were eaten alive.”

  Tom patted his fellow crewman on the back.

  “That wasn’t the worst of it,” Alphonse said. “The worst was having to kill men under my command before they went feral, too.”

  “Where was this village exactly?” I asked. “We could ask the World Health Organization to mobilize a team, examine the remains — ”

  “The bodies that were sent home were all cremated. Any caskets went home empty. We hit the village with a MOAB,” Alphonse said. “There’s nothing left of that village to examine, Dr. Robinson. Not so much as two bricks stuck together.”

  Chapter 35

  DANIEL

  I awoke where I’d fallen. The bright summer sky had soured to a gunmetal gray. High winds off the lake pushed the roiling clouds in a race toward a twilight storm. The smells of blood — metallic and cloying — assailed me. I expected a headache from getting brained with a two-by-four. No headache came. Something else had changed, too. As I rolled over on my side, I spotted a license plate on an abandoned Caddy. The plate read: CHROQKR.

  Chiro-quaker? More likely, Chiro-cracker.

  Two thoughts occurred to me in quick succession: Personalized plates with vague messages are a dumb waste of money. More importantly, I can read! The little machines in my brain had granted my wish. Illiterate no more!

  I was never a big reader but as soon as the ability was back, I wanted to chew through a library of books. Instead, the first words I understood (besides decoding CHROQKR) was the provincial motto: ONTARIO, YOURS TO DISCOVER.

  I crawled to my feet. The scene of carnage revolted me. The trio who had attacked me were gone, one way or another, zombie or not. One was missing, either off to kill or dragged off to be eaten. The big man who had taken me down was now chewing on the man I’d kicked in the balls. He was making a hot, wet meal out of the guy’s triple chin.

  Hamish Allen said we were infested with brain parasites. Infested or infected, we were all monsters now. Still, I knew what was really going on in that man’s skull. He was no doubt feeling horror, revulsion and self-loathing at what he’d become. I could do nothing for him but I felt I had to try.

  I knelt beside the big man. “Hey.”

  I have my voice back, too! Hallelujah! I can talk again! I am not an animal! I am a man … sorta.

  He growled and went on about his grisly feast, uncooked and al fresco.

  “I know you don’t really want to eat that. I know you can hear me. I want you to know, this isn’t your fault.”

  The man growled again but continued to eat ravenously, not even lifting his head.

  “You’ve got brain parasites in you and some weird microscopic stuff I can’t really explain. You’ll try to fight it. I tried, too. I couldn’t stop myself, either. The people who came up with this shit injected me with something else.”

  As I watched him tear deeper into the fallen man’s throat, I felt the rising urge to join him in devouring roadkill. “I’m sorry I took your buddies down, man. It wasn’t me. It was the parasites and the little machines in my head. I’m so sorry.”

  For a brief moment, the big man glanced at me. I thought I caught a flash of the human he’d been. As he paused to swallow a chunk of pink flesh, clear juice slipped from the sides of his mouth. His gaze held me for a second and a single tear slipped down one cheek. Then he dove in again and, when he came back up, a river of blood flowed from between his jagged teeth and into his beard.

  He couldn’t even mouth a silent plea but I knew he wanted to. I guessed he wanted me to kill him. I pushed the thought away. I’d wanted that, too. Not being in control of my body and doing awful things had felt like being buried alive under the weight of dirt and heavy sin. A screaming mind is still mute.

  “There has to be a better way, man. I’m going to go find it. In the meantime, just keep telling yourself, this isn’t your fault. This isn’t you.”

  I began to get up to leave the big man to his meal. Then, quick as a flash, his hand shot out to grab me around the throat and squeezed.

  Chapter 36

  CHLOE

  “Picasso’s nano-matrix has changed since your damn test,” I said. “Picasso’s learning. I programmed AFTER to facilitate synaptic transmission and enhance cognition. I put in safety protocols so the cybernetic stem cells didn’t multiply unchecked. It’s supposed to optimize specific biological functions, adapting to the needs of the host without taking over.”

  “So you’re saying the safety protocol you employed failed?” Rigg asked.

  His tone didn’t suggest he was looking for someone to blame but I didn’t like the way he posed the question. “My safety protocol didn’t fail. It was erased. Picasso perverts all my work. It’s a damn abomination.”

  I turned to Thomas. “You did the demo with Nyx,” I said.

  “Yes. So?”

  “Was there some sharing of information?”

  “We had teams from both companies collect blood samples but all the samples came back to the Toronto lab.”

  “And they had acc
ess to Picasso?”

  “They had to evaluate our proposed delivery system for the aerosol. That’s all. They only had a few techs on site.”

  “Was Michael Cavanaugh or Douglas Hannah there?”

  “No. Nyx’s head of development, a Dr. Clover. She works directly under Mike — ”

  “When I met Cavanaugh, he told me similar tech was in development elsewhere.”

  “When was this?” Rigg asked.

  “At the conference in Aruba. He’s the sort of guy who is capable of industrial espionage. Numbers would mean more to him than people. Maybe he could be useful if Nyx could help us find a cure.”

  “The Nyx lab is on the far side of the continent, Chloe,” Thomas said. “I think our best shot at solving this thing is getting into our own lab. That’s where Picasso got out. AFTER’s nano-matrix can learn.”

  “Then teach it something,” Shelly asked. “You get a bad dog, first you gotta teach it to sit.”

  “AFTER’s limits are two generations,” I said. “In my lab, I always make the first generation. The nanites make the second generation so they can fix what I mean them to fix. That’s where the manufacture is supposed to stop. If you let the bots keep on making bots, they become their own entity without safety valves. If the nanite colony learns too much from its environment, that old dog might not want to learn new tricks.”

  It seemed to me that the enormity of what he’d done was finally hitting Thomas. “AI without limits? How far could it go? Are we talking full sentience? A new species with self-awareness?”

  “Slow down. I don’t know if it’s full sentience yet. Could be, theoretically. Some of the infected are acting like they can plan ahead, learn and adapt to changing conditions — ”

  “And use strategy to kill us,” Shelly added. “Swell.”

  “When Cavanaugh talked about using AFTER’s medical applications for weapons systems, I thought he was just bragging, trying to get me into bed.”

  It could have been that, too. I did look pretty hot in that party dress.

  “Enough talk,” Alphonse said. “I’m heading straight to the lab. It looks bad but I don’t see how it’s going to get better if we don’t deliver you nerds to your microscopes.”

  Rigg looked up from his phone. “Alacrity would be much appreciated. I just heard from the PMO. The United States government is not satisfied with shutting down the borders and taking a wait and see attitude. If we don’t find a solution to this epidemic soon, we won’t need to get into the lab. They’re in discussions about nuking Toronto.”

  “Oh, c’mon! Would they really do that?” Shelly asked.

  Rigg shrugged. “That’s what I asked the Prime Minister, Officer Priyat.”

  “But the fallout — ”

  “The Americans are already flooding out of border cities, trying to put distance between us and them. It’s a go if their government senses we’re failing. The PMO is stalling but the White House seems unimpressed with our quarantine efforts. They’re concerned the President is prepared to ‘take precipitous action’ if they don’t see progress. Better to take decisive action that is wrong than to risk doing nothing and appearing indecisive.”

  “Better to do anything instead of the right thing?” I asked. “You know how stupid that sounds, right?”

  “Politics and scared people,” Rigg mused. “Explosive concoction.”

  “We worked out some worst case scenarios,” Thomas said. “This is much worse than any of our projections. No one could have predicted this … eventuality.”

  “Too many variables,” I muttered. “There are always too many variables for predictive models to be accurate. When you play with possibilities this complex, you don’t know what you don’t know. We’ve gotta go find out what we don’t know. Get us to the lab, Alphonse, no time to stop for tea.”

  Chapter 37

  DANIEL

  The big man’s fingers closing around my throat were as thick as sausages, his palms as rough as sandpaper. He would have had me if I’d given him time to close his fist. Fortunately, the nanites had optimized my reflexes. I was a fast zombie.

  I grabbed the fourth and fifth fingers of his hand and wrenched them back. My legs felt light and strong, as if they were made of springs. I kicked him in the face and he reeled back. His nose spurted blood and, as he rose, he licked at the flow fervently. Apparently, any blood would do, even if it flowed from his own broken nose.

  He charged at me from a crouch, coming in low for a tackle. With his weight, he could easily shove me to the ground and pin me to the road. I slipped to one side and tripped him as he passed. He smacked his head, denting the fender. He whirled and growled as he came at me again.

  I leapt away, onto the hood of a car. “Whoa, big fella. No need of that.” I had nothing to prove and, frankly, I had more important things to do. I turned to run but that was not to be. A sudden silence fell over Lakeshore Boulevard.

  Around me, hundreds of the zombie horde rose from their kills. The newly infected stared. Every victim of the Picasso outbreak seemed focused on me. Each of them stood perfectly still, watching and waiting. With their faces covered in blood and their vapid stares, I felt as if each gaze had weight, holding me still.

  I understood. Zombies attacked the uninfected, to kill or to spread the disease. Whatever their decision making process, when they looked at me, they saw a monster who did not fit. Maybe speaking was enough to qualify me as food.

  “Hey, everybody. Just here to let you know … um … I feel your pain. And he started it.”

  The big man attacked again, sweeping my feet out from under me. My back hit the hood of the car hard. If I allowed him to get hold of me, I was probably finished. He outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds and it wasn’t all fat. He had muscle to back his play.

  I rolled off the hood as he smashed his fist into the hood. My face had been in the spot he smashed a second ago. He probably broke a knuckle but that didn’t give him pause. The big guy kept coming. I circled the car, trying to keep the vehicle between us.

  “This is turning out to be a replay of me and Andrew Butters in Grade 3!” I yelled. “Long story, you’re probably not that interested in right now.”

  Here’s the short version: One day after school, Andrew asked me for the time. I said I didn’t know. He threatened to smash the fender on my bike so, without thinking about the fact that Andrew was in Grade 5 and I was two years younger and smaller, I defended my property. I took a swing at him. To his surprise and mine, my fist connected with his nose and it got bloody. That big kid chased me round and round the parking lot until the music teacher stepped in to make sure Andrew Butters didn’t murder me.

  The longer version is that Andrew got his revenge years later by stealing my pants while I was in gym class. He shoved me into the girl’s locker room. That’s also how I got my first girlfriend. She broke my heart and that led me to end up with the girl who ran off with my best friend. I digress. The Law of Unintended Consequences is strong. That’s my point.

  The big man snarled as he attacked and I leapt atop the roof of another car. He was pretty slow and I probably could have avoided him all day. Unfortunately, more zombies got involved and they weren’t on my side. They reached for me. A woman who looked like her shoulder had been dislocated made a grab for my ankle with her unmangled arm. Two more began to climb up, one from the hood, one from the trunk. I slipped to the ground and pushed the woman with the bad shoulder aside before the circle could close and cut off my escape route.

  I briefly thought of running for Lake Ontario and trying to swim to freedom. Too many zeds blocked the way in that direction and they were coming toward me. In a moment of inspiration, I zigzagged through the jammed traffic to get to the mercenaries I’d killed. I went for the green military truck and began to climb into the back. Before I could close the door behind me, the big man circled his arms around me in a powerful bear hug. He lifted me into the air to pull me back.

  I tried slamming my heels into
his legs. He grunted enough with each blow to make me think I was hurting him. It wasn’t enough. His grip tightened and I was losing air. Desperate to get away, I threw my elbows back, smashing him in the jaw twice. My third blow caught him in the ear and he staggered.

  I grabbed for the lip of the van’s back door and kicked and wriggled to get away. It wasn’t the smooth and brutal counterattack I’d pictured in my head. However, I was sure that if I allowed the fight to go to the ground, he would have me given his weight advantage.

  I almost got away but he grabbed my left arm. I surprised him by allowing him to get a better hold. As he pulled me closer, I twisted and whirled, and grabbed his beard. I pulled his face down as my right knee drove up and down, pistoning into his face and jaw. After five or six strikes, the big man let go and flopped back to the pavement with a hollow thud. His nose was all messed up and his breathing was ragged, like he was struggling to breathe through wet, twisted straws.

  I’d won my fight with my attacker. As I looked down at him, I wanted to eat him. However, I had no time to savor my victory or his gizzards. I’d escaped no one’s notice. The rest of the cannibals were coming for me. The noose was closing.

  I jumped into the back of the mercenaries’ van and took a quick inventory. It had exactly what I needed. Even my preferred weapon, the MP5, sat loaded in the gun rack.

  Chapter 38

  CHLOE

  Alphonse took to the turret as Tom backed the LAV up to the steps at Echidna Biosystems.

  “I’m hot,” Alphonse called. “Drop the hatch but stand by for my go.”

  The hatch dropped, a ramp for our exodus. The afternoon had turned dark and heavy drops of rain began to pummel the steps up to the lab.

  “Hold for my go,” Jerry reminded us, “and no worries! The 25 mm gun up top fires 200 rounds per minute. That’ll put a dent in any zombie’s day.”