The Tomorrow Code

by Brian Falkner

  The shop door was locked, but the window surrendered easily to a blow from a trash bin, and they picked their way gingerly through the broken glass.

  “A few plastic tikis are not going to keep those things away,” Fatboy said.

  There were baseball caps with New Zealand symbols, scarves, belts, woolen beanies, and T-shirts on a clothing rack in the center of the room. Tane was experimenting with the T-shirts, wrapping them thickly around his legs, when Fatboy said, “Over here.”

  Piled in a corner of the shop were sheepskin rugs, thick, woolly, and whiter than white. A popular souvenir for tourists of a country with 80 million sheep. Tane ran his fingers over the thick leather backing and nodded. “That should do it.”

  He wrapped a thick sheepskin around each leg, strapping them on with expensive leather belts. Another went around his midriff.

  He pulled up the collar of his leather jacket and then tied a thick woolen scarf around his neck for further protection. A pair of leather gloves covered his hands.

  “How do I look?” he asked.

  “Baa,” Fatboy replied.

  Tane stopped what he was doing and considered that. He took another large sheepskin and draped it around his shoulders, fastening the corners around his neck with a large metal safety pin.

  “Shape recognition,” he said. “The antibodies recognize shapes. Remember Dr. Green’s diagram with the circles and triangles and stalks? If we can change our shapes, then maybe they won’t recognize us.”

  A moment or two later, Fatboy also was covered in fluffy sheepskins. If nothing else, they reasoned, it was more protection against the creatures.

  They looked at each other for a long moment, then both burst out laughing, despite, or perhaps because of, the danger they faced.

  The banging and crashing was constant now, from the toughened glass of the entranceway, and the ominous cracking noises were getting louder.

  “We can’t go that way,” Fatboy said. “Maybe if we go back down in the elevator and come out through the car park on the side of the—”

  Two of the huge glass panels shattered simultaneously, and fog poured into the atrium of the casino. With it came a terrible hissing sound, and the front of the fog came alive in front of them. Antibodies, hundreds of them, and behind them the larger shapes of macrophages.

  “Get back,” Fatboy yelled, spinning around and racing back into the interior of the casino.

  Tane risked a glance backward. The casino was already full of a light mist, and it was thickening with every second. The macrophages were following them, but slowly, as if moving through water.

  “They’ve slowed down,” he shouted. “They can’t move as fast where the fog is thin.”

  Tane looked over at the central row of elevators. The doors were open on the one they had used earlier.

  They ran to it and Tane pressed the button for the first parking level. Nothing happened.

  “Oh crap!” he said.

  Outside the lift, the macrophages turned the corner of the central lift well and floated toward them, almost as if in slow motion.

  Tane jammed his finger on the button again, and Fatboy stabbed at the CLOSE DOORS button.

  The white shapes moved closer, blocking their exit. Tane cowered into the back of the elevator, holding his arms in front of him as if that would somehow protect him against them. Fatboy pulled himself up to his full height, folded his arms, and faced the approaching creatures. The closest of the creatures was just about at the doors of the lift when they slid smoothly shut.

  The doors opened again with a ping on a misty, murky, gray concrete parking level. Only a small stream of fog flowed slowly down the ramps from the upper levels and was swiftly dealt with by the heavy air conditioners, used to dealing with car exhaust fumes.

  “This way,” Fatboy called, pointing to a sign marked EXIT.

  It was an eerie feeling running through the underground mist. A broken fluorescent light flickered nearby, bleakly strobing the thin vapor. Their running footsteps echoed off the hard walls of the parking level.

  Tane expected antibodies or macrophages to come flying out of the mist at any moment, but none materialized. Here on the parking levels, the mist was simply too thin for them.

  They ran up a long sloping ramp, and then another, toward a sign marked HOBSON STREET EXIT.

  The exit proved to be a curving lane, taking them up and out into the thicker fog of the open air.

  “Crawl, don’t walk,” Tane said with a sudden flash of inspiration. “We have to change our shapes as much as possible. And move slowly. Crowe said they can feel movement in the fog.”

  They dropped to their hands and knees and moved with languorous, careful movements, trying not to disturb the thickening fog. They bypassed the payment booths and barriers at the far end of the lane, to find themselves on the pavement outside.

  The fire engine was barely fifty yards away, in the middle of the intersection, the twin red flashing lights at the front and rear of the machine the only thing they could see of it. There was no sign of the crew, but Tane had not expected there to be. In the distance, a dog was barking madly.

  The city street itself might as well not have existed, for all they could make of it.

  Tane touched his helmet to Fatboy’s and whispered, “Don’t speak if you can help it. They are attracted to sound as well.”

  From near the fire engine, there came a hissing sound, growing in intensity. Tane froze and saw Fatboy do the same. He drew a cross over the faceplate of his helmet, which Fatboy could just see in the thick fog. Don’t even breathe.

  Two macrophages flew past them, moving fast, not stopping. They seemed not to sense Tane and Fatboy, motionless, on all fours, on the pavement at the top of the ramp. There was a whistling sound and a swirling in the air around them and a handful of antibodies drifted by.

  Tane waited until the sounds had faded before tapping Fatboy lightly on the shoulder.

  They stopped once more on the way to the fire engine, when a macrophage hissed to a halt right in front of them. Tane was sure it had seen them, and what it was waiting for he couldn’t imagine. He shut his eyes and held his breath, waiting. What was it like, he wondered, to be ingested by one of the creatures? Did it hurt, or was it all too quick? He slowly opened his eyes, still waiting for obliteration; however, after a few moments, it slid away with a gradually increasing hiss.

  Tane peered around the corner of the casino, trying to detect if there were any macrophages waiting by the machine. If there were any, he could not tell. They were invisible in the thick fog, and if they were not moving, they were silent.

  The dog started barking again, very close by, although he could not see it.

  There were hissing noises from the same direction, and the barking grew louder. The dog was quite safe, Tane thought bitterly. It was human cells the macrophages were out to destroy.

  He crawled a yard forward, then another, and suddenly there was a low shape running through the fog at him, barking madly. The dog stopped a yard away and growled viciously, snarling at him with its lips drawn back and teeth bared. He reared back and upward in an instinctive reaction.

  Suddenly there were hissing noises converging on them from three different directions.

  “Run for it!” Fatboy cried, jumping to his feet.

  The door closest to them was open.

  Tane was in through the door first and heard Fatboy slamming it behind him. The driver’s window was down, and he groped for the handle in the dark and fog. His hand latched on to something and he wound it furiously. The window closed.

  There was a bang from the door they had just dived through, but the metal and toughened glass held. He caught a glimpse of a bloated white shape outside but forced his attention back to what he was doing.

  Through the front windshield three or four of the creatures were approaching.

  “Drive!” Fatboy shouted, grabbing at controls on the passenger side.

  Drive? How? He had nev
er driven a fire engine, or any kind of truck, before in his life. But then, neither had Fatboy. He found a key on the front dashboard, not on the steering column, and turned it. The engine roared into life.

  Gearshift, where was the gearshift? The truck was automatic, he realized, and pulled the lever into DRIVE.

  He found the handbrake and stomped on the gas pedal. The truck lifted and surged forward. There was a hard bang from the front of the machine, and two of the approaching macrophages disappeared, parts of their bodies flying out to the sides of the windshield. He spun the wheel to head down Hobson Street, toward the wharves. It was a one-way street, and they were going the wrong way, but that thought barely registered.

  The thick wool of the sheepskins that covered him were smothered by antibodies, each Y-shaped creature fitting snuggly into the next, more and more of them, covering him like a hideous patchwork quilt. A few landed on his helmet visor, and he brushed those away but ignored the rest.

  There were more bangs now, from both sides of the truck.

  “Got it!” Fatboy shouted, hitting a button and grabbing at a large joystick. A jet of water shot out from over their heads. Fatboy wrenched at the joystick and the stream shifted in front of the truck. “Go for it,” Fatboy yelled.

  Tane was. His foot was on the floor, and the big red engine accelerated smoothly.

  A group of macrophages reared up out of the mist in front of them, and Fatboy swept the water across them, slicing them into pieces.

  The crashing noises were all around the truck now, from the roof as well.

  A side window behind them shattered, and the main windshield cracked as a macrophage slammed into it, the body crushing itself against the toughened glass, before flying away to the side.

  The Mercedes convertible they had seen earlier was parked haphazardly, sideways across the street. Its nose was a crumpled mess, rammed into a parked car.

  Tane hit it near the rear end, and it spun around and up into the air, over the parked car, and landed on its roof on the pavement.

  Fatboy swept the jet of water from side to side and in front of them, clearing a path through the charging macrophages.

  They flew across the Fanshawe Street intersection, colliding with, and demolishing, a traffic light. It barely slowed them down.

  Tane held the engine straight on course, across the overpass, and gunned the engine again as the Tepid Baths slipped past below to his left.

  A gust of sea breeze, the same sea breeze that had nearly knocked him off the tip of the Skytower, swept in from the harbor, lifting and pushing back the fog for a moment.

  In that tiny window of time, Tane saw their doom.

  They would never make it to Princes Wharf, he realized. They would never make it to the sea.

  In front of them, blocking their path, revealed just for a moment by the rising curtain of fog, dimly lit by the long line of streetlights, were macrophages. Row upon ragged row. Column upon column. Spread across Quay Street and out through the entranceway to the wharves. Thousands of them. At the same location where he and Rebecca had once congregated with hundreds of people to march for the whales, now the macrophages were massed to march against the human race.

  Not even the charging fire engine would be able to cut a path through that number of the creatures.

  “Tane!” Fatboy shouted, and Tane spun his head to see the white face of a macrophage inside the truck, just a yard from his own. On Fatboy’s side of the machine, the rear door had lost the battle with the macrophages and, now just a twisted mess of metal, hung pathetically from a single hinge.

  Tane screamed, and the fire engine veered toward the concrete base of the overpass.

  It all seemed to happen in slow motion. One moment the creature was moving toward him, and the next Fatboy was there, a shiny object in his raised hand.

  Tane couldn’t understand what it was for a second, and then it flashed down at the macrophage, slicing into its flesh. The patu pounamu, the greenstone club, slashing again and again at the creature.

  It fell backward, and Fatboy thrust forward at it, the club a blur. He was shouting and chanting in Maori now, the blood of the warrior surging through his veins.

  But the creature thrust forward again, its white flesh engulfing Fatboy’s arm. He grunted a terrible, hollow sound, and the club dropped to the floor.

  The truck veered into the concrete wall, sparks flying from the tortured metal. Tane wrenched his eyes back onto the road for a second, hauling at the wheel to keep the truck from smashing into the dirty gray concrete bridge support.

  He looked back to see the creature, and Fatboy, disappearing out through the door of the machine.

  Fatboy’s voice, despairing but somehow undefeated, “Save the world, Tane!”

  Then he was gone.

  “Harley!” Tane screamed.

  There was no time to grieve, no time to even accept the full enormity of the disaster that had just occurred. That would have to come later. There was a thunderclap above him, and he looked out through the shattered passenger window, through the thinned-out fog, to see a jet fighter aircraft clip the side of a skyscraper and plunge toward the ground in front of him.

  The wreckage of the jet exploded along Quay Street in front of him, and there was no time to brake or take evasive action as the burning jet fuel and torn chunks of metal carved a long straight fiery scar across the city center.

  The concussion blew out the window of the fire engine, and only Tane’s instinctive reaction, ducking down behind the dashboard, saved him from being smeared over the back wall.

  There was a wall of flames around him now, a barrier of fire, but then that was past, too, and he realized that the massive, fiery explosion had shattered the ranks of the macrophages, hundreds of them disintegrating in a single instant, many more being blown across the edge of the long wharf and into the ocean, where they shriveled and oozed. The seawater turned white.

  Others disappeared under the thundering wheels of the fire truck, now out of control and tearing across the side of the wharf.

  A small café, tables and chairs already scattered by the explosion, erupted under the charge of the fire engine. The truck veered to the left, but the metal safety railing coaxed it back onto a straight course.

  Dazed, clinging to the doorframe, Tane could only watch as cafés, restaurants, and apartments flashed by the driver’s window. The safety railing at the very end of the wharf was fast approaching.

  The remaining macrophages were attacking now, flinging themselves at the broken body of the fire engine.

  One reared up under the windshield and clambered over the edge of shattered glass and twisted rubber, reaching out toward Tane; then there was a thunderous crash, and Tane flew forward into the dashboard, blood pouring from his head, and the macrophage flew outward, spinning backward in midair as it fell toward the ocean.

  Tane was almost aware of the safety rail shattering under the impact of the crash and the momentum of the fire engine, and then there was a strange silence, with just the screaming of the high revving engine and the ocean rushing up to meet the cabin of the truck.

  THE DREAM

  Images came in gasping blurs.

  The sudden rush of water into the cabin. He remembered that, he thought. Or was it just his imagination creating dreams and tricking him into thinking that it was memory?

  Like Fatboy’s voice as the creature dragged him—no, that wasn’t right, as he thrust the creature—out through the shattered door of the fire engine. Had that been real?

  He thought he remembered the swirl of mud as the front of the truck nose-dived into the soft bottom of the ocean, at the end of the wharf. The patterns that appeared in the brown-gray whirls, the faces that tried to speak to him but just spiraled away into the water.

  He remembered seeing the Möbius. The crazy yellow doll-like shape of the little submarine.

  Giddy arses blown will tea-coffee a waste-bin.

  He didn’t remember swimming, or latching
on to the top of the sub, or finding the escape hatch and climbing inside.

  He didn’t remember any of that, and yet he must have done all of that, for his next coherent memory was that of Rebecca, weeping, one arm around his neck, the other hanging limply by her side.

  And the stupid grinning face of that damn monkey.

  TE KENEHI TUARUA

  Tane turned the outside lights on for a while to watch the fish at play, twittering around beneath the ceiling of the cave. They fascinated him.

  It had been three days.

  Three days since the wild ride down Hobson Street in the runaway fire engine. Three days since his brother had given up his own life for his. Three days since the end of the world.

  No, not the end of the world. Just the beginning of the end of mankind.

  There were millions, billions, of life-forms on the planet Earth, this tiny rock hurtling around the sun. But the human species was the one that had overstepped the mark. Pushed the boundaries a little too much. Tried to conquer and dominate that which could be neither conquered nor dominated.

  Pride cometh before a fall, they said, and mankind certainly had had pride. Building monuments and civilizations that they thought would last forever, yet were just a pinprick in the long roll of fabric that was the history of the planet.

  Three days, and he had spent most of them sleeping, according to Rebecca, who had somehow cared for him, despite grievous injuries of her own. Concussion, she thought, but she wasn’t a doctor, so who could really know.

  She wasn’t a doctor, and neither was Tane. There soon would be no more doctors. Nor lawyers, nor stockbrokers, nor movie stars, nor presidents.

  The view from the periscope camera was always the same. Endless banks of white fog, stretching in all directions.

  By now it might have covered the whole of the country. Perhaps already made its start toward Australia. The Pacific Islands, and on to the coast of South America.

  They’d try to stop it. They might even get better and better at fighting it. But it was too big. Too hungry. And there wasn’t enough time.