The Necropolis Trilogy (Book 2): The Contained

by Sean Deville

  17.00PM GMT, 17th September 2015, Houston, Texas, USA

  The broadcast went live to an average of five million people, and sometimes it went out three times a day. Thinking people, patriots, people who knew their government was lying to them, plotting against them. The broadcast went out on time, and went out strong. But today, it wouldn’t last the designated three hours, and one of the country’s most popular syndicated radio and live streaming internet shows would never be aired again.

  “This is the Andrew James Show.”

  “Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to this, the second hour in today’s syndicated radio broadcast. It’s as I feared. My sources inside the Pentagon have revealed to me, moments ago, that the government are implementing their power grab. In the third hour, we will have retired CIA operative Kevin O’Toole on to answer your questions, but right now, we need to talk about what’s about to happen in this country. We need to lay down some knowledge on what the puppets in Washington intend to do to implement their master’s globalist agenda.”

  “I’ve been saying this was going to happen for over twenty years. I’ve been saying that the command and control structures were being put in place to turn this country into an autocratic hell hole. And you know, people laughed in my face. Well, they’re not laughing now. No, now people are listening, are seeing the truth that we have been shining a light on for decades. Let us be clear here. They will come for your guns, ladies and gentlemen, and if my sources are correct, they are already on their way. I have the documents in front of me right now, ladies and gentlemen, the executive orders they will use to lock you away and take away what little is left of your rights. Even now across the country, FEMA is coordinating with the FBI to take you and your children from your homes, to take you for your protection to processing facilities. That’s what they always say though, isn’t it? It’s for your protection. Do it for the children, they will tell you—”

  Andrew James was suddenly plunged into darkness, and his voice, the voice that had been shouting the message of conspiracy for several decades, disappeared from the airwaves.

  “What the hell?” he shouted to his production team. Seconds later, the emergency lighting came on.

  “We’re off the air, boss,” his editor said.

  “Why hasn’t the backup generator kicked in?” James asked. A sliver of icy fear wormed its way down his spine. Was this it? Was this how it went down? There was a muffled bang from somewhere in the building, followed by another. “Are you getting anything from the security feeds?” James asked, referring to the security cameras around the building.

  “Shit,” he heard someone say, their identity hidden by the gloom. He had a staff of over twenty people, all loyal to the cause. James stood up, frantic, and stormed over to the editing area in the room. Several monitors were black, except two showing video feeds. The surveillance system had its own redundant power supply, and because of that, he could see dozens of armed men storming the ground floor of his facility. This was indeed it.

  “What do we do, boss?” someone asked.

  “We make our peace with God,” James said calmly. Finally, it was here, the day he always knew would arrive, and he knew he had mere seconds to make a decision. Did he get down on his knees and let them take him, or did he fight and take some of the fuckers with him? The latter wasn’t an option, not here. The people who worked for him were devoted to the truth, but they didn’t need to die. James took out his phone, saw that there was no service, and flung the now useless device across the room in frustration. James heard a pistol being cocked and saw Robert, his friend and longest serving employee, holding his Glock. “Put that away, son,” James said. “It won’t do you any good here.” They could hear the sounds of their enemy working their way through the building. Situated on the third floor of the building they were in, there was no escape. From below them, he heard the muffled report of shotguns firing.

  “I’m not going to let them take me,” Robert spat.

  “Yes, you will,” James said. “Our job is done here. We’ve done all we can, and there’s no point dying when there’s no chance of changing anything. It’s up to the people of this country now. It’s up to them to decide whether they accept this New World Order, or stand up and fight for their freedoms. Put the gun down, lad. You have a family.” Robert hesitated, and then he seemed to deflate, the gun almost dropping from his fingers to the table in front of him. Fortunate for him, because at that moment, something clattered onto the ground beside him. He looked down just as it exploded, the white light blinding, the sound destroying any thought of who he was. For seconds, all he knew was pain. He choked on the fumes, collapsing to his knees painfully, his vision pure white. He didn’t see the multiple armed men burst into the studio.

  “FBI, EVERYONE ON YOUR KNEES.” James turned to the intruders, put his hands behind his head and did exactly as he was ordered.

  “Entry in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Go, go, go,” the voice said over his earpiece. Pushed up against the wall of the building, he watched as the steel-reinforced door to the building exploded, and as the debris settled, he followed his fellow SWAT team members into the building. Other explosions from other areas went off almost simultaneously. It was dark inside, and he flipped the night vision down from his helmet, the bold FBI letters on the Kevlar of the man in front of him shining brightly. He had done this hundreds of times, had stormed countless building, fired his weapon more times than he could remember, but he had never killed anyone. And there was something about this that didn’t feel right. The people in this building hadn’t broken any laws, at least none that he knew of. And yet those were his orders, plain as day. Take down the broadcast; the information the man possessed must not be aired to the public. The intel had come too late to seize those in question before they got to the broadcast centre, so they had to go with the next best thing.

  “Ground floor clear,” a voice said. And then the stairs, Mitch was going up, almost on autopilot, his training kicking in. He was good at what he did, one of the best. Soon, he would command his own squad. He knew he was first in line for promotion. Could he let his doubts jeopardise that? This is all he had ever wanted. To be here, doing this, with his buddies. But could he follow these orders blindly? Hell, he had listened to the guy’s show himself, had seen the man’s passion and his conviction. He held some extreme beliefs, but wasn’t this supposed to be a Democracy? Didn’t people have the right to those beliefs, no matter how objectionable, no matter how controversial?

  “Bravo team, secure the first level. Alpha team, proceed to target.” How many stairs had he ascended like this, the adrenalin pumping, the breath heavy in his lungs, forcing fire into his chest? This was the moment, this was living. But was he now living a lie? And could he accept that? The answer came to him almost instantly. Yes, he could. He didn’t like it, but if this was the start of the new order, he wanted to be on the inside, be a part of it. For his family, for himself.

  His ascent stopped, and there were multiple shotgun reports from the floor below, most likely breach rounds to force open locked doors. He heard a door kicked open and then the momentum began again.

  “Move, move, move,” the voice shouted to him over the ether. Up to the landing, through the door, secure the corridor, up to the broadcast room. Mitch threw the flashbang through the open door, the explosion and then the assault. They entered defensively, fanning out to confront what they knew would be armed civilians.

  “FBI, EVERYONE ON YOUR KNEES.” He heard people shout, heard himself shout. Through the smoke and the blackness, his enhanced vision saw confused, staggering forms. He turned to his left, saw someone reaching for a shotgun, felt his finger slip off the trigger guard as he stormed up the individual.

  “Don’t do it,” his voice roared, but could the guy even hear him? The man looked in his direction, seemed to look through him, and the hand touched the weapon. And then the man’s head shot back and the body flew to the floor as the bullet entered in the centre of his for
ehead. Mitch felt the pressure on his finger, the contraction enough to end a life.

  “Studio clear,” he heard his commander say. Mitch felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Clean take,” a voice said in his ear. “Good job.” It didn’t feel like a good job. And in the background, someone was screaming. Mitch looked around, shock starting to set in at what he had felt forced to do. Hundreds of missions and he had never shot a man before. He’d taken down serial killers, drug barons, and white supremacists, and the first time he felt forced to use lethal force was some guy in a radio studio.

  “Fuck,” Mitch said under his breath.

  Mitch sat on his own away from everyone. The sun was still hot, and he rested in the shade at the back of the building he had just raided. He held the phone, his hand shaking slightly. Pressing the on button, he made a call from the speed dial. The name that came up said simply one word: Sis.

  “Hi, Mitch,” the voice came from the other end after three rings. “How’s Texas?”

  “Fiona…” he suddenly found that he couldn’t speak. Tears began to well in his eyes.

  “Mitch, what’s wrong?” came the concerned voice.

  “I’m…I…”

  “Talk to me, Mitch.” The voice was calm, loving. That sweet voice he had heard so many times. He needed her, wanted to hold her, to just release the pressure that was building inside. For the first time since he was a child, he began to cry.

  “He went for his gun,” he said, the words almost gasping, full on crying now. He couldn’t stop it, didn’t know how. “I killed him.” Over by one of the several ambulances parked outside the broadcast house, his friend saw him. From fifty metres away, he witnessed the pain, understood it, and began to walk over.

  “You did what you had to do, Mitch,” Fiona Carter said. Sat in her office in DC, all she could do was sit and listen to her brother’s anguish.

  “What am I going to do?” Mitch asked.

  “You are going to do what you always do. You’ll get through this. It’s tough now, but that will go away. Trust me, I know.” And she did know. The first time she’d killed a suspect, she’d been a wreck for several days. It had almost ended her career. And then she’d had to go through the investigations, the allegations that it was an unnecessary use of lethal force. The allegations of racism that came from the dead man’s family. The fact the man she had shot had been holding a gun at his own daughter’s head seemingly irrelevant. The fact that he had been high on PCP and had already shot his wife inconsequential. Of course, she had been exonerated, even receiving a commendation for saving a child’s life. And the subsequent lawsuit from the man’s family had disappeared when the media had finally begun to play the true story of what had happened.

  “I didn’t want to kill him, Sis,” Mitch said, the tears drying now. Carter heard someone talking to him in the background.

  “You did what you had to do, never forget that. We all do what we have to do.”

  18.11PM GMT, 17th September 2015, Resurrection Ranch, Texas, USA

  Perhaps this was the final lesson God wanted to teach him. Abraham sat in the ornate office of his ranch, the mobile phone in his hand no longer receiving any kind of signal. The call had been cut off mid-sentence, which was troubling. Putting the mobile down, he picked up the landline and heard that there was no dial tone. So, that was that, they were coming for him. Abraham had expected as much. He was guilty of pride, of hubris and of arrogance—he saw that now. And now he was to suffer the Lord’s ultimate judgement. Abraham dropped the phone receiver back into its cradle and stood on shaky legs. Time had not been kind to him, and he knew that he would very shortly be with his maker.

  He had only been partially successful in his goal. He had underestimated the man he called president, the man who he had helped into the Oval Office, all with the ultimate plan of bringing the man down, and with him the high office of President of the United States. He had intended to humiliate the man and the office, to bring the government to its knees and show the people the false gods they elected to do whatever they could get away with. The president was supposedly immune to prosecution from anything done before being elected to the highest office of the land, but how would that constitutional rule play out against the president being accused of murder? But that wasn’t going to happen now.

  The betrayal by the man who had created the virus had been unexpected and disappointing. Abraham hadn’t seen it coming, couldn’t understand why the man had done what he had done. Because of that betrayal, his agent inside MI6 had been uncovered, and from that, Abraham’s identity had been revealed to those with vengeance in their hearts. His hatred of the British had only been part of his master plan, a plan that was now thwarted. He had never intended to release the virus on the US mainland. The remaining samples had been sent to a much better place. Even now, they sat ready to be released at a predetermined time, to bring judgement to the godless and the heathens. How he had looked forward to seeing the heretics cower under the hammer of God. Well, he supposed he would now have to watch that from heaven.

  The final samples of the virus were different from that released on the UK mainland. That attack had been a message, a warning and a threat to the world that God was watching and that God was vengeful. The new virus was for the purging, the removal of those who worshipped the false gods. It was a race-specific bio-weapon that would only infect someone with a specific genetic code. It would not infect those of the Caucasian race. But it would create an army of infected and undead that would see the world descend into the time of Revelations, as written by John the Apostle. The end times were here, and only the faithful would survive this ultimate test. Those who knew the word of God would be forced to rise up and fight the army of the damned, and in doing so, cleanse the world and remake it anew.

  But he was undone. He had come so far only to be thwarted at the last step. His plan to release the devastating news that the President of the United States had assaulted and raped someone as a teenager would now never come out. Rodney had predicted this attack and had already countered it. With the country now under martial law, there was now no way the main stream media would break the news, not with Homeland Security rounding people up in their thousands. And even if it did, it would just be spun as conspiracy theory, and anyone with any sort of reach in that regard was probably already on a bus to the nearest FEMA camp.

  His hope had been to throw the country into disarray so that true patriots could step up and make the country great again, one nation under God, not one nation under the almighty dollar and the corporate boot. And then, when the country was on its knees, threatened on all sides by its true enemies, God would strike again, turning the Middle East into an infected hell hole. That would still happen—the devices in Mecca and Medina were already primed. But now, his plan would be warped, tainted. It would be an emboldened president, unconcerned with public opinion, who would use the destruction of Islam for his own ends. For the first time in his life, Abraham realised he had been played by a mind greater than his own. Falling to his knees, he clasped his arthritic hands together and thanked his God for the final insight into his own flawed character. It was a lesson in humility and he welcomed it gladly.

  He didn’t hear the plane. He didn’t hear the bomb that was released several thousand feet up by the Hercules transport, and as he prayed, the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal hurtled towards him. The FBI and the CIA had wanted to arrest him, to put him on trial, to show him to the world for the mass murderer that he was. But the president had overridden them. Why risk brave lives on taking an armoured compound when one bomb could do the work quickly and efficiently? Why give the monster a platform to vent his hate filled ideology? No. Better to send him to his God. And more importantly, better for him to die and take his secrets with him. And so the GBU-43/B fell from the sky, guided to the exact spot where it exploded, vaporising Resurrection Ranch and all those who dwelled within. Abraham died on his knees, and fifty others died with him. A
nd no news channel ever reported the monumental explosion in the Texas backwater. In such an isolated location, the sound that reverberated around the canyons surrounding the ranch, and the miniature mushroom cloud that was visible for several minutes, was merely an interesting talking point for those few individuals who saw and heard the evidence of the explosion.

  President Rodney thought that by killing his secret mentor, he would put an end to any threat. What he didn’t realise was how this one action would speed up the old man’s ultimate plan. Implanted under Abraham’s skin was a small, yet powerful transmitter that went silent with his death. Far above the earth, the supposed weather satellite that one of his subsidiary companies had built and put in orbit registered the lack of signal, and the software on board waited the allotted time. When the signal was found to still be absent, it relayed that information to another computer back down on Mother Earth. And so began a series of fail safes and relays that when triggered resulted in Abraham’s race-specific bio-weapon being unleashed onto a world that was already reeling from the previous day’s events.

  The hotel had over a thousand rooms and most of them were still full, even though the annual pilgrimage to Mecca was over. It had been built over five years ago, and everyone who visited was impressed by its splendour. What wasn’t well known was who owned the hotel and who had ordered its construction. If a forensic accountant had been given enough time, he would have found that the corporation was just a subsidiary of a global business owned by a reportedly reclusive man whose heart had, minutes earlier, stopped beating.

  The hotel had received recent upgrades to the fire suppressant sprinkler system, and that sprinkler system now kicked in, flooding the rooms and corridors with water. But, of course, there was no fire, and the guests scrambled from their rooms, cursing the drenching of their clothes and the annihilation of any electronic devices they possessed. They didn’t know what the water contained, and as they gathered outside in the cold desert air, the staff of the hotel tried frantically to shut off the downpour. But it was too late. The water was laden with the latest version of the Chief Cleric’s virus, another upgrade that wasn’t in the official work logs, and over seven hundred people were infected. A similar scene was played out across the Middle East and North Africa. Two hotels in Cairo, one in Medina, one in Doha. The people, cold and wet, unable to go back into their hotels, drifted off to cafes and bars to try and dry out and stay warm. And they took the virus, still dormant, with them, spreading it throughout the communities surrounding and servicing the hotels. In all, over four thousand people were infected in the first wave, and as with London, the virus began its slow methodical mutation in its new hosts, taking the human DNA to improve and reproduce itself. But unlike in London, the virus was slower in its presentation, and it would take days before the infection finally kicked in, those infected becoming the perfect vessels to carry and transmit the plague. By then, the infection would be far and wide across the world, infecting only those with specific genetic markers, leaving the rest of the population untouched. In the days to come, Great Britain would be almost forgotten as the whole world went mad.