2136: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

by Matthew Thrush

‘We burrow in,’ he said.

  ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘Nope. I’ve never been more serious,’ he said.

  ‘And how do you plan on us burrowing under the ocean for several miles?’

  ‘We use the facility’s air ventilation system.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Any underwater habitat, no matter how advanced, big or small, needs supplies. For anyone to survive under water for extended periods of time the habitat also needs recyclable, clean and sustained air. There must be pipes somewhere along the shore where supplies can be brought in.’

  ‘Why not use one of those entries instead?’

  ‘We could, but we risk being seen. With the main piping system used for cargo and supply transit, as well as people, we’d be best to crawl through the air duct above it.’

  ‘So you want to sneak into the supply tunnel, squeeze into a tiny ventilation shaft, and crawl for several miles until we get inside the underwater facility?’

  ‘Yup.’

  I mulled over the thought for a few seconds before responding.

  ‘That sounds ridiculous,’ I finally said. ‘I thought you had a better idea. Do you really think we’d be able to crawl for miles in a tight space? I don’t know about you, but I get claustrophobic. Not to mention the muscle and back cramps that are sure to arrive. What if we got stuck?’

  ‘Like I said, this was just an idea. It’s not a foolproof plan, but it’s the only one I’ve got.’

  ‘Have you ever been inside the compound?’ I asked.

  He didn’t answer me for several minutes while the fire burned and popped.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘I have been there once when I was younger. Much younger.’

  I stared at him in disbelief. I had fully expected him to say no.

  ‘You have?’ I asked. ‘Why were you in one of SIND’s secret compounds?’

  ‘Remember when I said your father and I followed the Pavers after they took your mother?’

  He continued before I responded.

  ‘This is where they took her. They had a camp set up all along this coastline,’ he said, indicating the cliffs above us. ‘When your father and I split up, he went around the west side and I went to the east. The water levels were higher then, and the SIND soldiers had a sea base set up. There used to be a large dock about a mile or two north of here. I’m sure if we continued walking along the shore we’d come up to it, though I’m quite certain it’s no longer under water or in use.’

  ‘What happened that night, Parker?’ I asked. I hadn’t asked about that night, and yet, when I probed him about getting into the facility and how he knew about it, this was his answer.

  ‘I didn’t know what happened to your father and mother until many years later. But I…’

  He trailed off in reflection. I could see his hands shaking behind the fire. His face shined translucent as it lost its color.

  ‘They took me,’ he mumbled.

  ‘They took you?’ I repeated. ‘Like, kidnapped you?’

  ‘No. I was not a hostage and I never saw the others they had taken.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘How were you not a hostage if they took you?’

  His eyes had tears in them when he looked up at me through the orange flames.

  ‘I volunteered,’ he said.

  ‘You volunteered to be one of them? Why would you do that? You saw what they’re capable of. Why would you want to become like them?’

  ‘I didn’t volunteer to become a soldier,’ he said. ‘They had a special program. A new experiment they were conducting. I volunteered for the program and in return they would spare my life and the lives of your father and mother.’

  I had no words.

  ‘I must have been knocked unconscious while looking for your mother, but I don’t remember. I woke up in one of their tents.’

  ‘What did they do to you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘They caught you sneaking around their camp and did nothing? I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘I fully expected someone to come in and torture me until I gave them answers, but it never happened,’ he said. ‘What did happen is a gentleman in a suit came in and sat in front of me. We didn’t say anything for a long time. He just sat there and stared at me. I remember asking him what they were going to do with me and if they had your parents, but he never answered. Instead, one of the soldiers brought in a folder and this man flipped through it, every now and then looking up at me. When he finally spoke, I was shocked to hear a calm voice. He said, “Do you know who I am?” When I said no, he went on to tell me my full name, my family’s history, where I was born, what my parents did...He even knew all about your parents. I remember being terrified.’

  ‘Why were you afraid? Did you think he was going to hurt you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘If they had wanted to do that they would have already. It was his calmness that made me nervous. There was something about his eyes that just wasn’t right.’

  ‘How did he know so much about you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But however he got that information, he had it. He even knew things that I’ve never told anyone, ever.’

  ‘That’s weird. What was he, like some super soldier with telepathic abilities?’ I joked, but Parker didn’t smile.

  The look in his eyes made me feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Are you saying he was?’

  Parker shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘The things he knew, and the things I saw them do later on…I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said.

  Parker tossed another piece of driftwood into the fire and pulled out something shiny from his pocket.

  ‘This was his. Your father’s,’ he added.

  He handed me a gold sphere looped in a gold chain.

  ‘The gentleman that had come to see me had it. And then he presented me with an offer.’

  I flipped the miniature globe in my fingers. The fire’s light bounced along its rim. I could see my reflection in its surface.

  ‘What was his offer?’ I asked, slipping the chain around my own neck. I stuffed the globe under my shirt.

  ‘He said they were experimenting with a new chip that could enhance a person’s focus, memory, recall, and several other neurological functions, but that they needed volunteers in order to test it on human subjects. He made it very clear that the subjects needed to be willing, and that they couldn’t undergo the experiments by force.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ I said. ‘Why would it matter? If legally they could do whatever they wanted, why bother with volunteers?’

  ‘Something about the neurological pathways not allowing for success if the subjects were administered the drugs without consent. I didn’t understand anything he was saying. I only wanted to know why they were holding me, and where your parents were. He had said, “They’re somewhere safe. And they will remain as such as long as you cooperate with us.”’

  ‘Cooperate?’

  ‘Not try to escape,’ Parker said. ‘Not like I could. If I had stopped cooperating, I’m sure they would have killed me. When the man returned, he was wearing a white lab coat in place of his customary suit and tie. Instead of sitting down and asking me questions, he opened up a medical kit, took out a needle and filled it with some purple liquid. He squirted a little out of the end and walked towards me. “Hold him down,” he ordered the two soldiers standing guard while he jabbed the needle into my neck and injected the foreign substance. I fully expected it to be poison and to die right there, but nothing happened. He kept looking at his watch, then back at me, and then would scribble in his notebook. As time went on, he grew more excited.

  ‘“Parker, have you given my offer some more thought?” he had asked me after two hours of analyzing me with no noticeable result on my end. He may as well have injected me with water. “And what offer’s that?” I asked him, knowing full well what he meant. “Volunteer for the Alpha-G program, and
no harm will come to your friends.”’

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘I told him yes. What choice did I have?’

  ‘When you told him you would volunteer to his program, what did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything. He flicked his notebook closed, stood up, and left. And the next thing I know, four SIND soldiers come into the tent and blindfold me.’

  ‘What happened after that?’

  My own heart was pumping at full throttle and my skin began to itch from the thought of being probed with needles.

  ‘When I woke up, I was in a white room, harnessed to a table with metal cords. Doctor A, as I came to know him as, came in and did preliminary testing and questions. He administered another dose of the foreign purple substance and left. Every day, two SIND soldiers dressed in Hazmat suits would come and bring me to the white room. Doctor A would be there waiting. Once I was fully strapped in, he would inject me with more of the purple substance then he’d look at his watch just as he had done in the tent, then after a while he would ask me a long list of questions from a clipboard. After that, they’d return me to my room until that evening and do the same thing.’

  ‘Did you notice anything different while this was going on?’ I asked. ‘What kind of a test were they doing?’

  ‘They never told me, and I stopped asking,’ he said. ‘As long as your parents were safe, I didn’t much care what they did with me. Eventually, I stopped even noticing the injections and questions altogether. After two weeks, they took off my restraints and allowed me to walk freely. After three months, they were injecting me with three times the dose, and asking me more questions. I assumed the experiment was going well until one night three of them rushed into my room, placed a bag over my head, and took me away.’

  ‘Where did they take you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, but three hours later I was kicked out of a moving vehicle with my wrists tied.’

  He rubbed his wrists as if he were reliving that night.

  ‘I assumed the tests had failed and they were ditching me as collateral,’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t they just kill you? If the experiment failed, and they had no more use with you, why let you live?’

  ‘I have no idea, but I wished they would have just put a bullet in my head when they had the chance.’

  Parker’s face turned sour and his eyes burned with anger.

  He reached for the pistol by his waist and stood, but was knocked unconscious by the butt of a rifle whipping through the firelight.

  I went to rush to him, but strong hands from out of the darkness grabbed me and flung me backwards in the sand. My body rolled away from the fire and into the dark. I saw a black figure lift Parker’s body over his shoulder and walk into the night. Two more shadows walked in my direction. I crawled to my feet and took off in a sprint. I don’t know how far I got before my back exploded in pain and I crumpled to the sand.

  The cold sting of the ocean washed over my fingers as I lay there unable to move. Whatever hit me in the back had rendered me paralyzed. My consciousness flickered as my legs were lifted up from under me and my body went soaring through the air. My ribs cried out in pain as they met the firm shoulder of my assailant. I saw the shadow out of the corner of my eye before the hood went over my head and everything went dark.

  ≈ Chapter 37 ≈

  I was dead. That, or the backs of my eyelids were really dark.

  My world was darkness. Where the line between consciousness and unconsciousness fell, I could not tell. My stomach gurgled with nausea, and the muscles holding my spine in place throbbed. I knew I was awake when I heard them speaking in hushed tones. I wondered how long I was knocked out. A few days? A few minutes? There was no way to tell with this black hood over my eyes.

  ‘Do you think she will cooperate?’ I heard a man say.

  Nope, not dead. Just very, very unlucky. So much for our luck holding out.

  ‘She will do exactly as she’s instructed,’ a woman responded.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ the man asked.

  ‘Because if she wants him to live, she will do as we say.’

  I tried to gaze through the itching fabric suffocating my face in heat and sweat to see who was speaking, but all I could see were shadows.

  ‘She’s awake,’ the woman said.

  I felt hands on my shoulders. I started thrashing violently.

  ‘Get off me!’ I shouted. ‘Let me go!’

  Another pair of hands tore at my left arm and yanked me backwards. The back of my head smashed into something solid. The nausea in my belly got kicked into overdrive and rushed up my throat. My teeth burned as the stomach acid propelled the excrement from my abdomen and through my esophagus. I felt the warm mucus strain oozing down my chin. The sack over my head held it all in.

  ‘Who are you?’ I said. The words burned as they left my throat. I tried to slide my tongue along my lips, but it only made the cracked skin worse. I spat the remaining bile from my tongue.

  ‘Good to see you’re awake,’ the woman said. ‘Remove her hood, but leave her restraints on.’

  The world flickered into existence, and immediately I could breathe. The man to my right tossed the hood to the floor and it splotched with a squish with my oral sediment. I inhaled a big whiff of fresh air. The room was spinning with tiny white lights. The back of my head pulsated. I could feel it swelling into a tight knot, but the dizziness and the nausea subsided with each shallow breath. While my eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light, I looked around for Parker.

  I saw a body hunched over in the corner with a black hood over its head. He wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

  ‘What did you do with him?’ I said with hate in my voice. ‘What do you want with us?’

  The man to my right held my shoulders firm while I shook to be free.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ I snapped.

  ‘Be calm,’ the woman said. ‘We don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Then why did you kidnap us? Let me go if you mean us no harm.’

  The woman came into view as she leaned forward.

  ‘We can’t do that,’ she said in a calm and deliberate voice. She had pitch-black hair slicked back behind her head. I couldn’t tell if she had it in a ponytail or what. Her eyes looked bright green in the reflection of the dim cargo light.

  ‘Who are you?’ I repeated. ‘And what do you want with us?’

  The man to her left spoke up then.

  ‘My name is Doctor Hossiah. But you can call me Doctor H. And this here is my colleague, Doctor A.’

  ‘What do you want? Is he dead?’ I asked, motioning with my head towards what I presumed was Parker’s body in the corner.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Dr. H said. ‘For now.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What do you want with us?’

  Dr. A interjected. ‘We’ll get to that later, but for now let’s give you something to help you relax. We have a rough ride ahead of us.’

  She removed something from her coat pocket and came towards me. When I saw the syringe in her hand I tried to break free of my restraints. I smacked my elbow into the jaw of the man to my right eliciting a groan, and went to smash my hands into the temple of the one on my left.

  ‘Hold her down,’ the woman ordered.

  Two more men shot out of the shadows and held me down. I hadn’t even noticed them sitting there.

  ‘This will go a lot easier if you don’t fight,’ Dr. H said.

  One of them ripped my arm forward and held it still while the doctor stabbed the needle into my skin. She pushed its contents into my bloodstream. I tried to wiggle free, but the fight was already over. I lost all mobile functioning of my extremities within seconds. My arms fell limply to my lap and my head rocked loosely on my neck. My eyelids felt like heavy stone. I fought to stay awake.

  ‘What did you give me?’ I mumbled. Even my tongue seemed to stop working and I barely m
anaged an audible phrase.

  ‘Something to keep you calm while we talk,’ Dr. A said.

  The blood in my veins felt warm coursing through my body. It pains me to admit this, but I felt good. Like, really good. My lips cracked into a smile.

  ‘I promise if you let us go, I’ll behave,’ I said with a gurgle. I had saliva dripping down my chin, and I didn’t care the least bit.

  ‘I know you will,’ she said. ‘But talk comes later.’

  ‘What did you give me?’ I asked.

  ‘I gave you a low dose of a sedative. It’ll help relax you.’

  She flicked her hand and one of the men grabbed my dirtied hood and stuffed it back over my head. It smelled of vomit and sweat.

  A few moments later my body rocked from side to side with every bump. Were we driving? I thought I heard what sounded like water splashing against the vehicle we were in. During the brief moment the hood was removed, I glanced around the enclosure. It had looked like a cargo hatch of some sort, like the back of a plane, except smaller, like a van. Judging from the constant bumps, I crossed out plane. Seeing as it was quite bumpy, I crossed out plane. Besides, I was sure I would have heard the thrumming of the engines if that were the case.

  I heard a window slide open and a man’s voice yelled in.

  ‘ETA thirty minutes,’ he said, over the wind.

  ‘Copy that,’ Dr. H said.

  The window slid shut and the distinct sound of the ocean and the howling wind of the sea was muffled once more.

  So we were on a boat.

  My head bobbed to the side and the lights went out.

  ≈ Chapter 38 ≈

  The boat lurched backward suddenly, jerking my head to the side, as the engine died to a low thrum allowing the boat to ease to a halt.

  The smell of vomit had subsided, but the hood was still over my face. My body felt groggy and heavy, but the warmth and paralysis in my arms and fingers was gone. I pretended to be asleep while we inched closer to wherever it was we were going.

  I felt the side of the boat brush up against something. The man beside me grabbed my arm and lifted me to my feet.