Doomsday

by Chris Morphew

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1.21 P.M. 3 HOURS, 39 MINUTES

  I waited.

  Hunched over, hands cuffed around one arm of an enormous wooden chair that looked like it had been swiped from a museum. I was wrung out. Sick with fear. Dripping sweat. Beyond exhausted, beyond anything but the nightmarish visions of what Shackleton was going to do when he finally came for me.

  His office was immaculate, everything just as creepily neat and tidy as Shackleton himself. A giant desk stretched out in front of me, empty except for a computer and a little stack of journals topped with a fountain pen. Behind the desk hung another one of Shackleton’s paintings. The same weird, abstract brushstrokes, like finger painting almost. The same dull red.

  The walls on either side of me were lined with books – history, poetry, philosophy, art – all painstakingly arranged and ordered. I realised that every one of them was authored by someone who was either dead or about to be.

  A clock ticked loudly, somewhere out of sight. Like Shackleton had hidden it there, just to torture me with the noise of it.

  How long had it been now? An hour? More?

  I hadn’t heard a gunshot in ages. I hadn’t heard anything except the clock and the murmuring of the guards outside and the low hum of Shackleton’s air conditioner blasting the room with an oppressive, unnatural heat.

  Where were Reeve and the others? If they’d taken back the loyalty room, then why hadn’t anyone come for me? And if they hadn’t taken it back…

  Then the quiet outside was not a good sign.

  I looked down to where I’d tried to saw through the arm of the chair with my handcuffs. I’d kept it up for about twenty seconds before the guard came in and told me to knock it off, and in that time I’d done a whole lot more damage to my wrists than I had to the chair.

  What if this was it?

  What if he just never came?

  What if I just sat here cuffed to this fancy chair until Tabitha swept in and twisted me inside out?

  No. It couldn’t end like that. Even trapped here in Shackleton’s office, I couldn’t believe the world was just going to fall apart without me even fighting it.

  Jordan was still out there. She was probably halfway to the release station by now.

  Jordan, Calvin, and a magic baby.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  I tensed, my wrists jarring painfully against the handcuffs as the door suddenly burst open.

  Shackleton came striding into the office, as dresseddown as I’d ever seen him. He was still wearing his usual shirt and suit pants, but his jacket and tie were gone, his top button undone, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Red splotches spattered his white shirt and stained his hands and forearms.

  I felt a cold surge of adrenaline. Whose blood was that?

  ‘Please,’ Shackleton grinned, staring down at my raw wrists, ‘don’t get up.’

  He was back. Whatever little blip of fear or uncertainty I’d heard on the phone before had disappeared without a trace, covered over again by his usual smiling calm.

  And something else: a kind of gleeful anticipation on his face, like whatever was coming next, he was planning on enjoying it.

  Shackleton padded across to a little side table and poured himself a glass of water from a silver jug. He crossed back to his desk, taking the seat behind it as though this was just another business meeting. He held the glass to his thin lips, took a tiny sip of water, and then sighed loudly, pulling a coaster from somewhere under the desk and setting the glass on it.

  ‘I tell you,’ he said, arms crossed in front of him, ‘I’ve had quite a time this morning. These things never seem to work out quite as cleanly as one imagines at the outset, do they, Mr Hunter?’

  He paused, giving me room to respond, then pushed on, just as happy to carry the conversation by himself. ‘The disappearance of the fallout on today of all days!’ he said, like it was all one giddy adventure. ‘It gave us quite a scare. Imagine, making it this far in, only to have it all come to nothing in the final few hours.’

  My eyes dropped to Shackleton’s water glass, smudged red where his fingers had pressed against it. His hand slipped down, picking it up again.

  ‘Thankfully,’ he went on after another sip, ‘it appears our fears were unjustified. Dr Galton and I took a small sample group to the medical centre this morning. The fallout may have dissipated but, evidently, the protection it afforded our candidates has not.’ He lifted the glass up to eye level, frowning at the smudge marks. ‘The same, I am sorry to say, does not apply to their healing abilities.’

  I clenched my fists together, shaking but trying not to show it. A small sample group. Like our guys in the bunker? Was that Mum’s blood splashed across his –?

  No. The bunker had still been locked down when I’d called.

  But that was hours ago now. Anything could have happened since then.

  Shackleton smiled again, guessing what I was thinking but not giving anything away. His gaze slipped up over my shoulder, and the ticking of the clock seemed to swell to fill the room.

  How long left until the end?

  Shackleton’s eyes returned to mine, piercing through any attempt to cover up the terror flashing through me. I stared back, forcing myself not to look away. Sweat slithered across my skin, sticking my clothes to my back.

  Shackleton chuckled and took another mouthful of his drink. ‘I’m almost disappointed you won’t be around to see it,’ he mused, running his finger in a slow circle around the rim of the glass. ‘You’re an intelligent young man, Luke. I know in time even you would have seen the beauty of what we are about to accomplish here.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, finally taking the bait, ‘because slaughtering humanity is exactly my idea of –’

  ‘Salvaging humanity,’ Shackleton corrected, like I’d said the wrong word by accident. ‘Grasping hold of what little is left before the whole enterprise disintegrates completely. Or would you have us continue down the path of blind self-destruction until we tear ourselves to pieces entirely?’

  ‘You want to tear everyone to pieces!’ I said, handcuffs grinding into my wrists again. ‘That’s your exact plan!’

  Shackleton shook his head patiently. ‘Not everyone. And not because I take any joy in it. I am no monster, Luke. However, one need take only the most cursory survey of the history of the human race to discern the trajectory on which we are currently travelling.’

  He looked like a kid at Christmas.

  ‘The present humanity is a cancer. A hulking, selfdestructive scourge, unguided and ungoverned, stubbornly incapable of rising above its primordial origins. Its only hope,’ he paused, leaning forward, ‘is leadership. The singular vision of a guiding force with the courage to see the crisis for what it is and the prescience to set a course toward true human flourishing.’

  ‘By murdering us all?’ I said. ‘How is that –?’

  Shackleton chuckled darkly. ‘As if you were not already accomplishing as much on your own! The entire planet teeters on the precipice of complete environmental collapse and still you forge merrily onward, gorging yourselves into oblivion as if the next generation were an enemy to be slaughtered. You make a sport of inequity and waste, turning a third of your own food production into landfill, while every two seconds another child dies of starvation.’

  The clock ticked loudly overhead.

  ‘Meanwhile, not content with the two hundred and thirty-one million butchered in the insipid wars of the past century, you continue the proliferation of weapons powerful enough to render this entire planet uninhabitable and obliterate whatever slender hope of recovery you might delude yourselves into believing you have left. How long before it all boils over, Luke? How long before the last threads snap and the whole human enterprise vanishes into the darkness of a blind, indifferent universe?’

  I opened my mouth and closed it again.

  ‘You could not be setting yourselves a more exacting course towards self-annihilation if you were doing it on purpose
,’ said Shackleton. ‘Humanity does not need my help to die, Mr Hunter. That much is well in hand already. Humanity needs my help to live.’

  ‘Yeah, well, no offence,’ I said, finding my voice, ‘but I vote not you for that job.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Shackleton, eyes glinting again. ‘Go on, then. Tell me I’m wrong. Plead humanity’s case. After countless centuries of chaos and depravity, tell me with a straight face that yours is the generation that will spontaneously pull itself up by its bootstraps.’

  I sat back in my chair, caught off-guard by the question and, worse, by a fresh jolt of the same nagging feeling that had gripped me in the depths of Mum and Dad’s divorce: that if humanity was the best the universe had to offer, then maybe we really were all screwed.

  ‘Mm,’ Shackleton nodded, before I had time to answer. ‘So you admit –’

  ‘No! I don’t – That’s not the point!’ I exploded, reeling but still convinced I was right. ‘Who are you to decide any of this? What gives you the right to –?

  ‘The right?’ said Shackleton, excruciatingly calm, the smile back on his lips. ‘Right is what we make it, Luke.’

  ‘That’s crap!’ I said. You don’t just get to decide –’

  ‘And in any case,’ he pressed, holding up a hand, ‘the matter is now closed. Your second attempt at a coup has proven even more ill-conceived than the first, and your reckless destruction of my shield grid has gained you nothing. Even if Officer Calvin had not been eliminated at the armoury this morning, and even if you were somehow able to penetrate the release station without my being present – which, let me be clear, you cannot – the dissipation of the fallout certainly does not bode well for an infant’s chances of besting the most sophisticated weapon ever devised.’

  Shackleton studied me intently, waiting for a reaction. But instead of caving under the weight of such a comprehensive list of all the ways we were done for, my brain latched onto the one chink in Shackleton’s armour. Calvin hadn’t been eliminated. Not at the armoury, anyway. Where was Shackleton getting this from?

  ‘You didn’t know?’ said Shackleton, misreading the confusion on my face. ‘Yes, I’m terribly sorry. And just when you might have found yourselves an ally with some hope of assisting you,’ he shrugged, face twisting in false sympathy. ‘Your dear friend Jordan and her newborn brother – Tobias, is it? – were apparently not with Officer Calvin at the time, or else my men at the armoury might have made a clean job of it.

  ‘Not to worry,’ he said with a slight grunt as he pushed back to his feet. ‘I have dispatched a team to address the situation. The two of them will, I expect, not live out the hour. All that to say,’ he continued, sliding his chair under the desk, shrugging off murdering a baby like it was no worse than butchering a pig, ‘that despite today’s unforeseen obstacles, despite any lingering philosophical objections, and despite your incessant efforts to the contrary, Phoenix will survive.’

  I wanted to shout back at him, to kick and curse and rattle my chains, but what would be the point of any of it? He had me. And he knew it. And any reaction I gave would only be another victory for him.

  ‘So what am I doing here?’ I asked, as Shackleton paced across the room again, disappearing somewhere out behind me. ‘If you’ve already won – If I’m just going to get vaporised in a few hours anyway –’

  ‘I read a fascinating study earlier this week,’ said Shackleton casually, as though he hadn’t even noticed I was speaking. ‘A pair of Dutch researchers, investigating the human experience of pain.’

  I shifted, trying to see what he was doing, but the stupid high-backed chair blocked him from view.

  ‘The study sought to apply a numerical value to the intensity and severity of various causes of pain,’ said Shackleton, in a voice like an English teacher trying to get me excited about a new class novel. ‘The idea being that one could then rank those experiences against one another.’

  I heard a clack of wood on wood, and another little grunt as Shackleton bent to lift something.

  ‘The finer details of their research methodology were a little over my head,’ said Shackleton, moving back into view. ‘I must ask Victoria to step me through it all sometime. But some of the findings were truly eye-opening.’

  He stopped on my side of the desk, snapping open the thing in his hands. An easel, holding up a blank white canvas.

  ‘There was one particular pain experience that stood out to me,’ said Shackleton, pulling open another drawer. ‘An experience the study ranked far higher than I ever would have thought, higher even than childbirth. You’ll never guess what it was.’

  He leant forward, both hands on his desk, like he was actually expecting me to guess.

  I stared back at him, at the blood splattered across his shirt. It had still been wet when he came in here, but in the sweltering heat of the office, it was quickly drying out, turning the same dull rust colour as –

  Cold realisation washed over me as Shackleton reached into the open drawer and pulled out a glinting, silver-handled knife.

  ‘Accidentally severing a finger,’ he said, advancing on me, ‘ranked as one of the top five pain experiences measured by the study.’ He grinned incredulously. ‘Can you believe that? I understand it has something to do with the usually high concentration of nerve endings in that part of the body.’

  I shuddered audibly, finally unable to contain the fear.

  Shackleton’s smile broadened. He stopped at the easel, tracing his free hand along the top of the canvas. ‘This is a momentous day, Mr Hunter. You may not survive to see the end of it, but have no fear.’ He rolled the knife handle slowly between his fingers. ‘I will not let you disappear without leaving your mark.’

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1.24 P.M. 3 HOURS, 36 MINUTES

  ‘Whose blood is that?’ I asked, holding Tobias with both hands while he wriggled around like there were bugs on him.

  ‘Shackleton’s,’ said Calvin, giving the vial a little shake and then pulling the cap off. ‘He and Galton are the only ones who still have access.’

  I lifted Tobias up against my chest, finally giving up on keeping him in the sling, and crouched beside Calvin. Tobias kept squirming, like he was trying to flip himself over and see what Calvin was doing. A squeak of frustration escaped his throat and, feeling somewhere between stupid and terrified, I spun him to face the ground.

  Calvin’s hands hovered over the little panel in the dirt. ‘If this doesn’t work …’

  ‘Make it work.’

  He pressed the button. Something blurred out of the little hole next to it and then back in again. A needle. Calvin upended the vial, sending Shackleton’s blood dribbling down into the hole.

  ‘Trust him to make this as disgusting as possible,’ I muttered, as the excess liquid bubbled up over the side.

  ‘Careful,’ said Calvin holding out his arm. ‘Don’t –’

  The ground jolted under my feet and I lurched into him. He got up, dragging me back from the squaremetre section of the bunker that had started sinking into the ground. A trapdoor, like the ones under the town. Light shone up from inside.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, shaking Calvin off and readjusting my hold on Tobias, who seemed to have calmed down a bit now that he could see what was going on.

  The trapdoor rolled aside, revealing a set of shimmering silver steps. Calvin sighed heavily as he stepped inside, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. I looked back at Phoenix, the top of the wall peeking up over the rise behind us. ‘There’ll be more, right?

  More than just the guards from that skid. If Shackleton knows we’re out here, he’ll throw everything he’s got at us, won’t he?’

  Calvin paused on the stairs. ‘If Officer Reynolds has done his job, Shackleton thinks I’m dead already. He will be far less concerned than he should be.’

  ‘But Reynolds didn’t even –’ I broke off, figuring it out. ‘You sent him back to tell Shackleton he’d killed you. But you had him wait until after we left.’


  Calvin nodded. ‘You doubted me enough as it was without seeing me order him back into town.’

  ‘What about the explosion at the wall? Surely they must have seen that from town.’

  ‘With any luck, Shackleton has assumed you were acting alone,’ said Calvin, continuing inside. ‘It certainly seems that way, judging by the half-hearted approach he’s taken to coming after us.’

  He slipped out of sight and I rushed down after him, into a narrow passageway, gleaming silver on all sides, as spotless and pristine as all the buildings back in town. As all the buildings back in town used to be, anyway.

  Tobias squeezed his eyes shut against the light, and I raised a hand to shield his face.

  As soon as the door hissed closed above overhead, the fear that had been pressing in since last night suddenly lunged at me, biting down like an animal. I was shocked by the force of it.

  The stairs continued down and down, a lazier spiral than the one running down to the Vattel Complex, like we were circling around and around some giant structure in the middle.

  ‘So,’ I said, pulling myself together enough to get the words out, ‘how about you tell me what happens when we get to the bottom of this thing?’

  Calvin kept walking.

  I sped up, closing the gap between us. ‘Calvin –’

  ‘Almost there,’ he said.

  I backed off, startled by the emotion in his voice.

  Just keep going, I told myself over and over again as we plunged into the ground. Whatever this is, Calvin already told you Tobias isn’t going to die. He can’t. That’s not how this is meant to end.

  But then what was Calvin so freaked out about?

  Finally, the stairs ran out and we emerged into a big round room, almost completely empty. Every surface was the same Shackleton Co-operative silver, glinting under bright white lights.

  In the centre was an enormous pillar, maybe three metres across. The pillar ran straight up for about ten metres, then spread out like a giant kitchen funnel until it was as wide as the room itself.

  Mounted to the side of the pillar at head height was a monitor like the one I’d seen last night, up on the top floor of the Shackleton Building. Two digital countdown clocks: