Apocalily Series (Book 2): The Almighty Lady of Tomorrow

by Fizzotti, Marcos

  “Hi there” The woman spoke to Amy “Nice day for fishing, huh?”

  “Grandma?” Amy asked.

  “That’s right, honey. I’m glad you recognized me. I bet you’ve never seen me this young before, right?”

  “I saw pictures.”

  “Nice. My father, your great-granddaddy, used to bring me here to fish every time he got a license from duty. And I cherished those moments. Have you ever fished, honey?”

  Amy shook her head to say no.

  “Then, it’ll be my pleasure to teach you. Hold this.”

  She offered the fishing stick to Amy and the girl accepted it.

  “Hold it tight.” Grandma Sarah said.

  “I never knew great-granddaddy.” Amy spoke.

  “That’s because he was gone long before you were born. He was a great man and my personal hero. And he would be very proud of you, Amy!”

  The fishing stick bent.

  “Great!” Sarah said. “Don’t let it go! It looks like they’re still biting!”

  Then, everything went blank.

  All screens fixed to the ceiling showed nothing but darkness.

  “What happened to Amy?” Allison queried.

  “I don’t know.” Bonnie replied.

  “All brain and heart monitors are toast.” The head doctor murmured.

  Allison turned to Hertz and said:

  “Send your men to the oil-rig and find out what the heck is going on in there!”

  “I can’t.” He replied. “That’s what I tried to tell you when you came in. We’ve been overrun. The whole complex is taken.”

  Allison Forrester faced him for a couple of seconds. Then, she slightly moved her head to look some empty spot. Her eyes were expressionless. Her cell phone rang. But she did not move.

  “Aren’t you going to pick it up?” Hertz asked.

  Allison slowly brought a hand to her belt and took the cell phone. She looked at the screen and answered it.

  “Yes, Mister Chancellor.” She said “Immediately, sir.”

  She put the cell phone back to her belt and turned to Hertz.

  “Please, initiate extraction procedures.” Allison requested.

  “Yes, Ally.”

  Hertz nodded at another man and they both walked to a wall that bore a long panel protruding from it. Each man stood by one end of the panel. Hertz signaled to Bonnie and she typed some commands on her workstation.

  The panel slid to the side, revealing a compartment with two key slots on each end. Below each slot, there was a key protected by a case made of glass. Bonnie touched her monitor again and the cases opened.

  Hertz and the other man grabbed the keys and put them in their respective slots.

  “Everybody clear the center.” Hertz commanded.

  After making sure nobody was standing on the indicated place, the men turned their keys at the same time. A circular section of the floor in the center of the dome opened up automatically, in a way to form a hole. A staircase down became visible.

  “Okay.” Hertz said. “Miss Forrester, if you please...”

  “Only she is going?” Bonnie questioned.

  “There’s only one escape pod.” Allison explained. “As soon as I’m secure, I’ll send more pods.”

  “And how long is this going to take?” Bonnie asked.

  “About an hour or so” Ally replied.

  “An hour!?” The head doctor gasped. “I heard your man there say the complex is taken. We might be dead in an hour! Why can’t we wait in the underground hangar?”

  “It’s not allowed” Hertz responded “for security matters.”

  “Security matters my ass!” Another worker said. “We gave our blood for this company like anybody else!”

  “And the company won’t forget it.” Allison spoke. “I’ll personally guarantee your safety. You know I won’t let you down.”

  “This is not very reassuring.” The doctor complained. “What if we stand up right now and go down those stairs anyway?”

  “Then I have no choice but to shoot you down!” The guard said, drawing his handgun.

  “Hertz! Put that thing down!” Allison scolded him and turned to her team. “This is not helping, folks. It’s a delicate moment, but nothing I can’t handle, how about a little cooperation, huh? You’ll be safe in here.”

  “This seems most irregular, Ally.” Bonnie intervened. “I was not aware of this procedure.”

  “That’s right!” Another woman spoke. “None of us was!”

  “Yes, you were.” Allison responded. “When you accepted this job, you all signed a contract. You should’ve read it. If you haven’t, please do it the first chance you get.”

  All employees in the room looked at each other puzzled, not knowing what to say, left alone what to do.

  “Everything’s going to be fine!” Allison promised.

  “Okay.” Bonnie finally murmured, more defeated than actually convinced.

  The others felt they did not have much of a choice as well and calm themselves down.

  “We have to go, miss.” Hertz insisted.

  “Just a sec…” Allison answered.

  She turned to her engineer.

  “At least the Tornado signal is out?” Allison asked.

  “No.” Bonnie whispered. “It never made it to the Big Mambo King. According to the logs, Amy’s brain absorbed the entire signal and redirected it to the internal systems, causing a massive surge of energy.”

  “What’s the consequence?”

  “The oil-rig will explode, sector by sector.”

  26th MOVEMENT

  “Alright, folks, be seeing you in a bit.” Lily said, jumping on the speedboat.

  “No way!” Tara retorted. “You need me to operate the mainframe in there. I’m going with you.”

  “We don’t know what we’re going to find in there.” Lily said. “It’s better if I go alone and make sure the coast is clear. We keep in touch. If I come across any mainframe, I give you a ring and you tell me what to do.”

  “This is the first oil-rig I see with a dish antenna on top.” Price observed.

  “In the worst scenario, I’ll just destroy the antenna.” Lily said. “How are things in this neck of the woods?”

  “We seized all systems, except for one inside a big building that looks like a planetarium.” Tara informed.

  “Judging by all electromagnetic waves emanating from there, I’d say it’s the shielded place where the signal comes from.” Price spoke. “All big shots must be in there.”

  “Okay, we check it later, I got to run.” Lily decided.

  “Have you ever piloted a speedboat?” Mate asked.

  “It got seats and a steering wheel.” Lily answered. “Only the tires are missing. It should be straight forward enough.”

  Lily started the engine and sailed at high speed, only not in a straight line.

  “She’ll make it alright,” Price said “but she’ll come down with a serious case of seasickness.”

  Lily arrived at the oil-rig and searched for a place to tie up the boat. Not knowing very well how to stop the vehicle, she simply killed the engine and paddled with her hands. She finally found a place which appeared to be suitable for docking. As the sea was kind of agitated, the boat collided with an improvised mooring, but the Australian still managed to tie up the vehicle to a pole.

  “Bollocks!” Lily complained to herself while rubbing her aching belly with a hand. “Even my truck with a broken axle is more stable than this thing.”

  She jumped on a platform and found a stairway up, which led to a half-open door. Lily had the impression there was somebody peeking through the crack. She took the hockey stick out of the sheath and carefully approached the door.

  Lily pushed the door open, ready to fight whatever threat she could find. Nevertheless, she only saw a bunch of kids.

  “Hey.” The Australian said.

  “Hi.” The children replied.

  “What are you doing here, little budd
ies?” Lily asked.

  “Amy told us to wait here.” A twelve years old boy answered.

  “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Oswald.”

  “Where’s Amy, Oswald?”

  “She’s in the Awakening room.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “Just go upstairs. It’s in the tower.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Amy is planning to hurt herself.” Oswald said. “I saw in her mind.”

  Loud thunder-like clashes rumbled in the distance.

  “What’s this?” Lily queried.

  “I don’t know.” Oswald replied. “Those noises started some minutes ago.”

  “Alright, see that boat over there?” Lily asked.

  The children nodded.

  “You go there now.” The Australian said.

  She gave Oswald the keys to the speedboat.

  “You think you can drive it?” Lily asked.

  “I guess.” Oswald answered.

  “Good. When you think you waited long enough, just untie the rope and go.”

  “We don’t want to leave you, Lily.” A little girl holding a doll said.

  “You know who I am.”

  “Amy talked about you. I’m Jenny, this is Sally.”

  “Hello, both of you.”

  Lily turned to the boy and said:

  “Listen, Oswald. I’m putting you in charge of the children. You have to protect them. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it!” Lily spoke. “Take them to the boat. If you see any sign of danger, just get out of here. Got that, lad?”

  Oswald hesitated but nodded a yes.

  “Great!” Lily said. “I knew I could count on you. Now go.”

  The children followed Oswald to the speedboat. Lily proceeded upstairs.

  She went as far up as she could, by using the more external staircases. And that was a particularly large oil-rig. The stairs she had just climbed ended where she was and Lily could not find another way up. She knew she would have to explore deeper into the construction.

  Still outdoors, Lily circled an intricate huddle of machinery she did not have the slightest idea what it did. It was hard to believe that every little piece of equipment in there had a purpose. Anyway, nobody would put so many efforts and spend so much money in superfluous gear. The reek of metal was all around and nearly unbearable.

  She found a ladder at the edge of a platform. Lily climbed it. The point was to get as far up as possible, to see if she could find the bloody Awakening room. However, the structure shook harshly and Lily almost fell all the way down, back to the sea. She had to hang on one hand for a while, but soon got a grip with the other hand. Fearing the structure might shake again, she abandoned the ladder halfway to the top and went inside the main construction, just to find more iron, steel, strange machines and bad metallic smell. The whole place looked like a ghost town.

  She saw a cargo elevator and jumped inside. There were only two buttons, up and down, simple enough. Therefore, Lily just pressed the up button and the elevator went up. Wow!

  “I’m really getting the hang of this thing!” Lily cheerfully thought aloud.

  However, the structure trembled again like an earthquake, and the elevator tilted dangerously. The shaking stopped, but that lift was no longer going anywhere. With her boomerang, Lily damaged the equipment that held the elevator door close.

  She went to the top of the elevator and climbed the rest of the way up using the cables.

  “Me and my wonderful ideas” She grunted to herself.

  Lily finally stepped on a stable platform. She was tired. That was when she noticed she had only reached the space between the immense pillars and the rest of the construction. There was still a whole oil-rig above for her to climb.

  “Why do they make these things so big?” She questioned. “All this place does is pump oil. What is it good for anyway?”

  She investigated her surroundings. Sounds of explosions could be heard. Something was very wrong in there.

  Lily found a sign with the inscriptions Under Renovation right in front of a big flat terrain. That was definitely uncommon in an abandoned place, so she decided to follow the path where the arrow on the sign was pointing to.

  And the flat terrain ended in a glass door that led to what appeared to be a vast lobby of a luxury hotel. All rusty machinery, metal reek and iron she had encountered before seemed to belong in a past nightmare. Everything in that room looked brand new and even smelled like recently purchased furniture.

  “I could spend my summer vacations in here after all.”

  But the place was strangely empty. She proceeded with caution.

  A holographic screen that occupied an entire wall showed the image of a joyful man, who kept saying in a loop “the future is here! We have the ultimate cure for aging! Come and better you’ll become! We, from Camp…”, but the recorded message was never played until the end due to some malfunction.

  “The ultimate cure for aging is dying young.” Lily commented in the confines of her mind. “And then come back as living dead.”

  Behind a very clean reception desk, a set of elevators with shiny, mirror doors stood in splendor.

  “Huh-uh” The Australian decided. “Better not.”

  Lily easily found the stairs and up she went. It was a long way. The staircase led to a terrace with a great view of commercial buildings on one side and the nothingness of the ocean on the other side. But Lily knew her climbing was far from over when she saw the tower standing tall before her.

  The boy Oswald had said the Awakening room was in a tower. From where she stood, it was the only place left to go. It had to be there.

  “Lily, are you there, over?” echoed the voice on the radio.

  “Yes, unless you get me tickets to Melbourne, copy, I mean, over.” Lily responded.

  “We’ve been trying to contact you, but our calls weren’t getting through, over.” Mate said.

  “I’ve been indoors for quite some time. Maybe your signal couldn’t reach me. Now listen, tell Tara I’m not going to the mainframe room anymore. Something else came up, over.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m calling. Lily, the oil-rig is on fire! We can see it from here. And the flames are spreading fast. The place is burning, Lil!”

  “Well, I am a little cold anyway, could use some heat, over.”

  “The rig is also tilting, over!”

  “Oh, so that is me. I thought the continent was tilting, over.”

  “Lily, I’ve never thought I’d say that, but can the jokes for a while. You need to get out of there right now, over!”

  “I will, only not just now. I found a bunch of kids, but not Amy. I need to find her. And I came too far to turn back now, hum… over.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, over.”

  “Have I ever? I’ll get back to you, copy, over, under and out.”

  Lily entered the tower. And she saw more unreliable elevators and lots, lots of stairs.

  “Oh well.” She thought. “When in Rome…”

  Nevertheless, a door on the back wall called her attention. She knew she did not have time for sightseeing, but decided to investigate anyway.

  The door opened automatically and Lily went into a chamber. She found a switch and turned on the lights, which surprisingly worked. She was in a toy room.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere!” She talked to herself. “And if I get bored, I can always play here.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean.” A powerful male voice echoed from behind her.

  Surprised, Lily turned around, ready to fight.

  “Oh sorry” The man continued. “I didn’t mean to startle you, my dear. It’s just that many times I’ve been here and many times I’ve played with my grandchildren. Now, it’s all coming to an end.”

  “I don’t want to rain on your parade, but your nostalgia is not very convincing, mister…”

  “Chancellor” The man
responded. “People call you Apocalily, and guess what! They call me the Chancellor!”

  “I’ve heard it. You’re the big fish in this whole thing.”

  “Yes. But don’t worry. I just want to talk. I gather we still have some time before the rig burns down.”

  Lily grabbed her boomerang and tossed it at the man, but only to corroborate a theory. As she expected, the device went right through the Chancellor and back the same way to her hand.

  “And you surely have nothing to worry about.” Lily said. “You’re not even here. I’m talking to a goddamn hologram.”

  “Oh, I’m here alright, only not in this room. And you’re not going to find me. It is a big rig.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Sounds of explosions roared louder and louder. The floor trembled. It was noticeable that the room was bending downward.

  Under the docking bay, the children squeezed as best as they could on the speedboat. The structure above was falling apart on them. Boys and girls gazed up scared. Some of them started to weep. Oswald put the key into the slot.

  “I don’t like this.” Mate spoke to Price while watching the distant oil-rig through binoculars.