Dawn Over Doomsday

by Jaspre Bark

  Colt on the other hand appeared to be a man whose conscience had just caught up with him. Like the gold cross he wore around his neck it had grown heavier with every vicious thing he had done in its name. Anna noted that they were both wrestling with the same dilemma, but in opposite ways.

  Anna also felt as though, in their own perverse manner, they were courting her. Like she was the only child of a wealthy land owner. Both men wanted to wed her to their cause. Both craved the power they thought she could give them. Once again it came down to men and their insatiable appetites.

  The doors of the lab were wide open when they arrived.

  "Oh," said Greaves in surprise. "How convenient, a flaw in their security even I didn't foresee." He stood in the doorway to block everyone's path. "There's a lot of deadly and infectious material in there that's about to get loose. Wait here a moment."

  Greaves appeared a moment later with his arms full of bio-hazard suits. "You're going to need these." He handed a suit to everyone but Anna declined hers.

  "I won't be needing that," she said.

  "No, of course not," Greaves replied.

  The doors to every room in the lab were wide open as they walked through. Only the hexagonal booth with the titanium containers remained shut. Anna felt a hole open up inside her, one that longed to be filled by the virus. She wanted to cradle it with her body and let it grow inside her.

  Anna, who had been leading the small war party through the lab, turned to stop them now. "I can take it from here."

  "Wait," said Greaves. "You have to check the thermostat before you release the container's lid. Otherwise the pressure could..."

  Anna held up her hand to hush him. "That's alright. Like I said, I can take it from here."

  The door to the booth slid open as Anna approached and slipped inside. The air was still and cold but it also felt somehow turbulent. The lids to the containers popped open by themselves.

  The virus itself was doing this. Anna could suddenly sense it crawling on every surface.

  There is always a point of no return when we commit ourselves to a course of action, Anna thought. This is mine.

  As in all those moments, Anna felt a sense of dread for every unknown thing this might mean. And a sense of loss for everything it wouldn't.

  She opened herself up to the virus, took it inside her as though she was drawing breath through every orifice and every pore of her body. A million unseen microbes fell on her, hungry to feed. And like a mother suckling her young, she nourished them.

  Tears ran down Greaves' face as he watched through the visor of the suit. It was happening. Everything he had planned over so many years was coming to pass. Humanity's salvation, he had really made it happen.

  The moment was broken by the noise of footfall getting closer. It sounded like there were lots and lots of men heading their way.

  "They're on to us," said Colt. "They knew the first place we were gonna head would be straight for the Doomsday Virus."

  "You didn't think they'd give it us without a fight did you?" Hiamovi said.

  "No-one gives up a weapon like this without a fight."

  Greaves saw Anna fall to the floor. She was entering the transitional phase of symbiosis. The virus was attacking every single function of her body and mind. Breaking it all down so it could rebuild and replicate it. She would come close to a state of total death before it brought her back to eternal life.

  Anna was incredibly vulnerable. If anything happened to her in this state it could jeopardise the whole process.

  "We have to get them away from here," said Greaves. "We need to draw their fire to protect Anna. She needs time to recover. If anything happens to her now it could mean her life. Then everything we've fought for will be pointless."

  "What're you suggesting?" said Colt.

  "If we cut across the main corridor they're coming down, we can double back and attack them at the rear. They'll be caught off-guard and we can draw them back the way they came."

  "Is the position defensible?" said Colt's henchman Simon Peter. "More importantly is there somewhere to retreat to if it's not?"

  "There's a staircase just around the corner," said Greaves. "If we make it a quick hit-and-run operation, we could cut along the floor above to throw them off our scent and head back down another staircase to pick Anna up again. But we have to go now!"

  Cortez looked at Colt and Hiamovi, who both nodded. Then he motioned with his head for everyone to follow him.

  As they ran out of the lab Greaves took a last look over his shoulder at Anna, writhing on the floor. He hadn't told her about all the pain. He hadn't know it would be so great.

  Hiamovi ran shoulder to shoulder with Colt and a step behind Cortez. He was an intriguing man this Latin American. A fearsome warrior who quickly took control of a situation. Yet he reinforced Hiamovi's authority with his men. Unlike Colt who tried to undermine it.

  Hiamovi would make sure Cortez fought with the UTN when they got back up top. Cortez would make a great general and he would bring the girl and the Doomsday Virus with him. Whatever they had planned for the virus Hiamovi would make sure the UTN was a part of it.

  They turned the corner and saw a line of about thirty guards heading away from them. They fell into formation in the corridor. Hiamovi and Colt stood either side of Cortez and aimed their semi-automatics. Akecheta, Hastiin and Simon Peter knelt beside them, weapons levelled.

  They opened fire. Four guards fell in the first volley. The men jerked and threw themselves into a crazy war dance, spraying blood from multiple wounds as the bullets smacked into them.

  The guards in front froze at the sound of gunfire. They spun round and tried to find cover as they groped for their rifles. Three more of them fell in another salvo as they turned. Two of them to body shots. The last to a spectacular and bloody head shot.

  Before the guards had a chance to return fire Hiamovi and the others took off round the corner. At the edge of his vision Hiamovi saw Hastiin collide with Greaves. The little guy was having trouble keeping up. Cortez dragged Greaves to his feet and pulled him along with them.

  Hiamovi's heart was racing. Killing was something new to him. He'd fought in one way or another most of his life, but only now was he learning to kill. To his alarm he found it addictive. Like political power, once tasted it was hard to put down.

  The stairs slowed them down and their pursuers gained ground on them. Shots rattled around the stairwell as they ran through the door onto the next level.

  "The... canteen and the... kitchens are this way..." Greaves said, trying to catch his breath. He looked ready to drop. Cortez grabbed the little man's collar and dragged him in the direction he'd pointed.

  The next few minutes were a blur. Hiamovi heard the guards coming up the stairs. He remembered racing into the kitchen when three figures jumped out at them. Everyone pointed their weapons but the middle figure called out.

  "Wait Great Chief it's me."

  It was Ahiga with Colt's men.

  "We have to get to the staircase just the other side of the kitchen," said Hiamovi.

  "No, Great Chief." Ahiga said. "We've just checked, there's about twenty guards on their way up it."

  "We're trapped," said Greaves.

  "No. You can take the elevator." Ahiga said.

  "Elevator?" said Greaves. "What are you talking about. There's no power, or haven't you noticed? How could we take the elevator?"

  "We did dickwad," said Fitch. "And something's powering it. I dunno, maybe they got a back-up generator."

  "What in hell's happened to your eyes?" Colt said. "And where have you been?"

  "We're blind," said Golding. "Bomb did it."

  "They came back for me," said Ahiga. "We didn't get out in time. The bomb caught us all. Guess I just got lucky."

  "You got that right," said Fitch.

  "Wait, it's their elevator," said Greaves. "It stands to reason they'd have a secret one installed, powered by a secret source. You must have stumbled
on it."

  "Hold on there Einstein," said Colt. "Who the fuck are 'they'?"

  "The masters of this place. The men who bankrolled the whole operation. The twisted old men who've been hiding down here waiting to regain control of a world their families have run for generations."

  "Great Chief," said Ahiga. "There isn't much time, you have to leave now."

  Ahiga took them through a hidden door to a small alcove where an elevator waited. It was tiny. There was room for only four or five of them at best.

  "We'll have to take two trips." said Hiamovi

  "There isn't time Great Chief. There is room enough for the seven of you at a push."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Someone has to stay behind and take care of all these men on your tail. I think that job falls to us three." Ahiga cocked his thumb at Fitch and Golding. "These two would only slow you down."

  They reminded Hiamovi of hunting hounds brought to heel.

  "Now hold on boy," said Colt. "Ain't nobody tells my men what to do apart from me."

  "Mr Colt sir," said Golding. "It's okay, the redskin's right."

  "And what about you Fitch? What do you have to say?"

  "Ain't shit for me up top. Not as a fucking blind cripple. Time's running out for you though sir. You better get along."

  Hiamovi and Colt stepped into the lift first. Cortez and Greaves followed. Fitch had been right, Greaves didn't smell good, as Akecheta, Hastiin and Simon Peter noted when they squeezed in.

  "Great Chief," said Ahiga. "The UTN and the Fifth Age of Man are noble causes, no matter what sort of deeds they are built on. Don't waste this moment. Don't let everything we've done be in vain."

  "I won't," said Hiamovi as the doors slid shut.

  As Ahiga watched Hiamovi go for the last time, he wondered if he was leaving everything he'd built up in safe hands. Then he realised he had little time for such thoughts, these were the last minutes of his life. A time for action.

  He pushed Fitch and Golding back into the kitchen. They'd stopped bitching about being pushed around and just accepted it now. Ahiga turned on all the ovens and every gas ring without lighting them.

  "Hey what's that smell?" Golding said as the appliances hissed away.

  "That," said Ahiga. "Is the smell of our coming victory."

  A minute later both squadrons of guards converged on the kitchens. By the time the torch beams had landed on Ahiga, Fitch and Golding standing in the middle of the room it was too late to mention the smell of gas.

  Ahiga's right arm was raised. In his hand he held a Zippo lighter. Fitch and Golding both had hold of Ahiga's wrist.

  "You're not getting away from me mother-fucker," said Fitch. "I'm gonna follow you all the way to hell, just to see you suffer."

  "Race you," said Ahiga and struck the wheel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Anna came to with the sound of the explosion. The ceiling outside the lab had come down and shaken her awake.

  She stood slowly, limbs shaky. She drew a deep breath and let it out again. She was light headed and more than a little euphoric.

  Anna felt as though she had just pulled through a thousand major illnesses all at once. She had walked in the valley of the shadow of death and climbed out to bask in the sun. She wanted to burst into laughter and tears at the same time.

  The virus had shown her death and transformed her body. She heard a ringing in her ears. No, not in her ears, in her whole body. So much sensory information was suddenly flowing into her. Things that she would never normally know about.

  She could taste and smell every surface in the lab, all at once. Feel the bodies of every rat, spider and fly in the complex. Anna heard the bacteria in the guts of every person and felt the chemical electricity crackle through their brains.

  She was no longer human.

  The virus's millions of endlessly replicating microbes were spreading throughout the complex. Each one sending back information along a complex chain to the nexus of their activity. No wonder they had to rebuild her normal human physique. If, in fact, her physique had ever really been human.

  Anna reached out with her mind in a hundred different directions to find a way out of the laboratory. The way she'd come in was blocked but there was a further series of rooms beyond these, that led to a staircase.

  Anna found the doorway. She didn't need to see in the dark. She had thousands of extra senses now. The door was locked. She felt the static hum of electricity coming off it. Strange, Anna had thought all the electricity to be down. She reached out in search of another source and found a smaller back-up generator, channelling energy to only a few parts of the complex.

  Anna concentrated and was able to cluster a whole culture of microbes around the wiring of the lock, eating it away until it shorted and the door slid open. The minute she stepped inside the room she knew she didn't want to see what it held.

  This was where the thick blanket of sorrow, the air of death and clinical cruelty that pervaded the whole complex originated.

  The rooms were full of corpses. Deep frozen corpses, dissected corpses, disease ridden and putrefying corpses and, in the ovens out the back, the ashes of burned corpses. It was the age of the corpses that troubled Anna. She could tell from all the information she was receiving what they were. But she did not want to admit it.

  In the last of the connecting rooms Anna felt life of a kind. Sickened by so much dead flesh she instinctively moved towards it.

  The room was filled with preserved body parts, limbs, internal organs and bones. Many of them had been sliced open for inspection. All of them belonged to children no older than eight years old. Many came from unborn foetuses.

  At the far end, beyond a series of midsections sliced from infant brains and placed between perspex, were three incubators. Anna came closer, hardly wanting to see what they contained. She was not pleased when she did.

  Inside all three incubators were four month old babies. Their expressions were entirely vacant. Their limbs twitched one at a time in an ongoing pattern, like they were puppets or automata. Over two thirds of each child's skull was missing. Their brains were exposed and a complex array of micro-circuitry was fused to them. Wires ran from the circuitry out of the incubators and into a series of monitors and displays.

  A door hissed open behind her and Anna turned to see four figures enter in bio-hazard suits. She had been so engrossed and repulsed by the children in the incubators she had not noticed their approach, although she was now aware that her microbes had been alerting her for some time. She just hadn't acknowledged them.

  The figures removed their head gear. It was Sinnot and his cronies Roth, Bennet and Joe Blackfeather.

  "I see you've been admiring our handiwork," said Sinnot. "Impressive aren't they?"

  "What in God's name are you doing to them?" said Anna, barely able to control her anger. "What is this place?"

  "Ah, I believe it's time to admit our guilty little secret. You see Anna, everything you see around you is a testament to our failure and your uniqueness."

  "I don't understand."

  "And neither do we. We don't understand you. How your biological composition works and, more importantly, how to replicate it. You see we're missing the original research team that created you, not to mention all their research. For a brief while, just before The Cull, it was necessary for us to hide from our employers. We hid in splinter cells to avoid detection and we took everything we had done with us. That was when we left you with the Amish.

  "Or rather when our colleagues did. They left you to grow up there. Monitoring you and the five others like you from afar. Then The Cull hit and we lost contact with our colleagues. Lost everything they knew. Our old employers took us back, we began working on the project again. But try as we might we could never create another host for the virus. Not without the original research.

  "We tried of course. We've been trying for years. At times we've come close but never close enough. All our efforts have ended in
failure. The subjects have always died, often quite painfully."

  "You mean," said Anna. "All these children..."

  "Complete failures everyone. It's quite tragic when you think about it. We've created the perfect biological weapon. The single most effective way of dominating a global population that has ever been conceived. And yet we just can't seem to find the last piece of the puzzle."

  Anna could feel her anger at these cold little men rising. The offhand way they discussed their atrocities enraged her. Her fury spilled out like a wave across every interconnected micro-organism in the complex.

  "And what," Anna said, pointing to the incubators. "Are you doing here?'

  "Ah yes, those," said Sinnot. "Now that's a little project we are rather proud of, something that hasn't ended in failure and frustration. You see, when they came to understand our project fully, our employers wanted more than a host for the Doomsday Virus. They wanted something they could dominate entirely. It wasn't enough to condition the child from birth to obey them without question. They had to have complete control over it. To make it something that would answer their every whim.

  "So we began to experiment with mind control. Every mental process of the creatures you see behind you is controlled by our equipment. There is no function of their brains that we don't control."

  "When you were scanning my brain, this is what you were planning to do to me wasn't it?" Anna said.

  "I'm afraid you're right. But it wouldn't have worked anyway. Besides, that's all rather academic now, wouldn't you say?"

  "You admit all this to me without any regrets?"

  "Oh I have plenty of regrets. Years wasted following fruitless paths of research. It would make you weep if only you knew."

  "Don't you know what I could do to you? Don't you know what I've become?"

  "Oh yes Anna. More than anyone left alive we know what you've become. That's why you won't do anything to us. You need us. No-one left alive knows more about the virus, certainly not that pathetic fool Greaves, You see Anna we four are the closest thing you have to a real father."