by Alex Scarrow
‘You’re saying . . . this place, this “bioverse” thing is . . . ?’
Bioverse is . . . universe abstraction, minus distance, minus time.
‘It’s the universe?’
All civilizations, encoded and saved. Ours also.
Jake let that sit in his head for a moment. ‘Are you saying what’s happened to us . . . the infection, the deaths, everything? That also happened to you?’
Yes. And all others. Transformation-gift to us, is now our transformation-gift to you.
CHAPTER 38
‘High Tower, this is Eagle One. I’ve got eyes on it!’
Aviation Pilot Warren ‘Hooch’ Moffat tapped his F-15’s joystick lightly. The horizon swung, his left wing dipped obediently and through the Plexiglas canopy he was now looking down at the flat table of the deep blue Atlantic Ocean. The only feature on its surface defied Moffat’s ability to describe it.
‘That’s uh . . . that’s a big-ass mother!’
He was a pilot, not a poet.
His wingman, Juice, kept formation beside him, rising up on his right as they both banked left together, describing a wide anticlockwise loop round the distant object far below.
‘Jesus Christ, Hooch . . . That thing made by the virus?’
Moffat shrugged and shook his head. Their briefing had been hurried and, he felt, not entirely complete. ‘Maybe.’
It looked like a floating funfair. That was the phrase that jumped into his head. The pinks, reds, purples, the swirls. The tall central structure looked like some Scooby-Doo island volcano ready to spray a geyser of M&Ms up into the sky.
Holy crap. It even had big bunches of what looked like pink and red party balloons floating above it.
‘Goddamn freak show,’ said Juice.
‘Eagle One, Eagle Two, this is High Tower. Just tell us precisely what you two are seeing!’
‘Copy that.’ Moffat huffed his cheeks out before replying. ‘OK, well it looks like a . . . like some sort of island. It’s shaped sort of like a kidney bean. Mostly flat, but then there’s a . . . what looks like . . . a central funnel shape. Similar configuration to a volcanic island.’
‘Eagle One, is the object in motion or stationary?’
Moffat and Juice were coming round towards the back of the island. He could see the white of breaking water at the front and a long fading trail at the rear.
‘High Tower, affirmative. This thing’s definitely moving. It’s doing it slowly, but it’s moving.’
‘Eagle One, can you give us an estimated speed?’
He shook his head. At this altitude it was virtually impossible to gauge. ‘Hard to say, less than ten knots, certainly.’
‘Less than ten knots, copy that.’
He looked again at the wake it was leaving behind. The fading trail of foam seemed to be doing a good job of sticking around in a receding straight line, which meant a calm sea. But there was something else he could see there. Something beneath.
‘Juice?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Check out the wake. What do you see?’
They were now passing directly over it and Moffat could see his wingman straining forward in his seat and looking almost vertically down.
‘I see . . .’ Moffat heard the soft clunk of his friend’s helmet against the canopy over the radio channel. ‘There’s something else down there . . . beneath the wake.’
They were over it now. The wake was rushing away behind them. They were going to have to do another lap round the island before they got a second look at it.
‘I saw something trailing below the surface. That what you meant, Hooch?’ added Juice.
‘Yeah.’
‘Eagle One, this is High Tower. Repeat your last.’
‘Juice and me were just saying it looks like this thing’s dragging something behind it. We’re going round to take another look. Lower this time.’
‘Copy that.’
Moffat kept his joystick tilted left as they described an even arc around the structure, several kilometres long, slowly trimming three hundred metres in altitude as they did so. Finally they were coming back round again to approach the viral island. As the front of the island slipped past his left side, Moffat could see much more detail on the surface.
The flat ‘ground’ at the front looked like several dozen acres of abattoir.
‘Looks pretty damn gross down there,’ said Juice.
‘Uh-huh, you can say that again.’
He could see blisters and boils, ropes of what looked like intestines, ribs and folds of dry flesh, all of it sun-baked and leathery.
The cone shape in the middle of the island loomed towards them. Hundreds of thread-fine tethers emerged from the volcano’s caldera, holding the party balloons in their big jostling clusters.
As they zoomed past, several dozen of the tethered clusters were released; a cloud of red and pink orbs detaching from their threads, rising quickly and spreading into the sky like a flock of startled birds.
‘Jesus!’ He instinctively twitched his joystick to the left to give it a wider berth.
‘Jesus!’ echoed Juice in his earpiece.
‘This is High Tower. What just happened, Eagle One?’
‘Floating objects, like balloons . . . a whole bunch just detached and scattered.’
They were past the cone-shaped central structure and now fast approaching the rear of the island. He craned his neck to look down again at the leathery, organic landscape. This time, though, it seemed to be alive with movement.
‘Shitty-shit!’ gasped Juice. ‘You see that?’
He could. A number of dark orifices in the ground had puckered open like whale blowholes and squeezed out what looked like soap foam. As the foam spread out and diffused he could see that he was actually looking at a swarm of creatures of varying sizes.
‘Eagle One, what are you seeing?’
‘Creatures. Everywhere. Thousands. Millions of them!’ replied Juice.
‘High Tower, this is Eagle One. The structure must have a substantial portion below the waterline. That’s where they’re all coming from.’
The two F-15s roared over the rear of the island and Moffat craned his neck to look down to his left at the island’s long wake.
He could definitely see something down there under the water: something thick and pale, the faint ghost of an object that seemed to extend back, beneath the bubbles of the wake, as far as he could see, becoming lost in the glint of the sun on the ocean’s rippling surface.
‘Looks like it’s dragging a thick line, or something,’ said Juice.
‘Repeat your last.’
Moffat replied. ‘The island seems to be dragging some sort of thick cable behind it.’
‘Cable?’
No, that wasn’t the right word. ‘More like an umbilical cord.’
CHAPTER 39
‘Will the president even bother listening to you?’ asked Freya.
Tom hunched his shoulders as he steered the jeep slowly along the Via Monumental. The road was busy, not with cars, but with ox- and horse-drawn carts and rickshaws stacked high with goods for trade. He honked the jeep’s horn to clear a space through the logjam and began to weave his way forward.
‘He may do. We go back a long way. We used to be army buddies.’
‘But if there’s a viral formation approaching Cuba, this island thing, he’s going to be really twitchy? Nuke-twitchy?’
‘Uh-huh. If I can’t reason with him, I might be able to take him down.’
‘You’ll get shot, won’t you? He’s got guards, right?’
‘Well, let’s hope plan A works. If the virus is on its way, Trent needs to be convinced to talk with it . . . or . . .’
Taken out.
Ahead of them was the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, a stone castle that dated back to Spain’s colonial times. Before the outbreak it had been a well-visited tourist spot just outside the city with a large manicured lawn out front. Now the area was being used dai
ly as a contraband marketplace where supplies of home-grown and undeclared food stores were being brought in to trade.
‘Dammit!’ he cursed.
They should have headed back into the city sooner. It was eight o’clock already and the roads going into and coming out of Havana were clogged. Less than an hour ago, Tom had woken up, emerged from the ‘bioverse’, to find himself in this jeep, parked up on a layby beside a field of cassava plants. He realized he understood everything: why the virus was here, why it had done what it had done. It was wary of the human survivors and the damage they could inflict with the weapons they had left.
He had to get to Trent before he made a terrible mistake.
But if the president knew he’d been touched by the virus he was likely to order him shot and burned without a second’s hesitation.
Seeing was the only way to comprehend it all.
He now understood what had happened to Earth. And why. His journey into that bizarre inner universe had been like a visit to a planetarium or a crazy virtual-reality ride in a theme park. But it had made perfect sense. If isolated pockets of life existed across the impossible-to-travel expanse of the universe, then the only chance they’d ever have to meet would be in a much smaller one. A microscopic cosmos.
‘You OK?’ said Freya.
He nodded. ‘My mind’s still reeling from all this.’
‘It’s a total head-job all right.’
He nodded. ‘Our language just can’t explain it, we don’t have the words.’ He honked the horn again and cleared a space down the side of a short queue of tethered sheep.
‘I don’t know how the hell I’m going to convince Doug to allow himself to experience what I have.’
The jeep rode on to the kerb, then bounced down to the road beyond. ‘Freya, when did you first suspect that . . . that the virus had got inside you?’
‘Before we got to Southampton, I was using a support stick. I was getting almost to the point where I needed a wheelchair.’
‘What was wrong with you?’
‘I had MS.’
‘Multiple sclerosis?’
‘Yuh. The symptoms were getting worse quickly. Then, on the ship, I noticed I was feeling better.’ She turned to look at him. ‘I don’t know when the symptoms started turning around. Could be months back. Maybe Grace infected me back at the castle!’
‘What about Leon? Do you think she infected him too?’
He realized how bizarre his question sounded. He was actually hoping Freya would say yes.
Crazy.
Since the outbreak, he’d been praying that his children had somehow escaped the plague, that they’d dosed themselves up on enough analgesics to survive the clouds of spores, and been smart enough to make it through the intervening years.
Now he was praying that Leon had succumbed to it.
‘I don’t know. I suppose if I could be and not know about it, so could he. I just can’t think when it could have happened. We were together pretty much all of the time.’ Tom steered the jeep on to the rough shoulder to bypass several rickshaw drives and the queue of traders now peeling off into the grounds of the marketplace. Tom picked up some speed as they headed into the large entrance to the Túnel de La Habana.
‘Trent might not even agree to see me,’ said Tom. ‘I think I used up most of whatever we have between us on getting him to send ships to Britain. He thought the whole effort was a waste of time and resources.’
‘That was all your doing?’
‘My nagging. I convinced him we could cherry-pick from the British survivors – engineers, doctors, medics – and boost the numbers of the non-Cuban population. We’re unwelcome guests here, as I’m sure you’re well aware. Especially since Doug seized control.’
At the far end of the tunnel, where the road ramped upwards to rejoin the street level of Havana, he could see a military checkpoint.
Tom slowed, lowered the window and produced his ID card. The US marine glanced at it quickly, recognizing his face and name.
‘Mr Friedmann, sir. What are you doing outside the city perimeter?’
‘I needed to get some headspace.’
‘You should’ve taken a marine escort out with you.’
Tom shrugged. ‘I know. I just needed to get some air.’
‘Sir, you know the president announced a lockdown on security this morning?’
‘No . . . no, I missed that.’
‘The British evacuees are going to be moved off-island. The president wants to get all US personnel—’
Just then Tom heard a voice raised in alarm. He looked over the marine’s shoulder and saw one of his comrades looking up into the sky. He heard another voice and another, more heads turning up, fingers pointing.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ, no . . .’
Three vapour trails were arcing up into the sky from the bay. He realized what they were. Nukes.
God, no. One of the spotter planes must have located the viral island coming their way. And Trent’s reacted the only way he knows how . . .
He turned to Freya. She was looking up at the arcing vapour trails, her mouth hanging open at the sight of them. ‘We’re too late, Freya.’
‘Are those nuclear bombs?’
‘Tactical nukes, yes.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘What’s going to happen?’ he asked. ‘What’s that mean? How’s the virus going to respond to them?’
She shook her head at all his questions. ‘I think this is going to end badly.’
CHAPTER 40
Rex Williams returned.
It felt like a birth of sorts, emerging, fully formed, into daylight from the womb-like smothering of soft tissue, as he stepped from the interior world of the artificial island.
Fifty metres ahead he could see the four men of his security detail, their faces hidden behind the reflections of their faceplates. Dr Calloway was further back, the helicopter sitting still and quiet behind him. He blinked at the harsh light of day, shivered with the cool air blowing across the viral structure’s vast ‘foredeck’.
‘Prime Minister?’ called out a muffled voice. ‘Are you OK, sir?’
Rex nodded. ‘I’m OK,’ he replied. ‘I’m fine.’
The figure gestured. ‘You have to put the suit back on, sir!’
He could see his biohazard suit had been laid out on the ground nearby, ready for him to step into. He realized he had to accept now that he was no longer going to be thought of as Prime Minister Williams, instead as a potential impostor, a viral agent.
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘The girl and the Chinese guy, are they coming out too, sir?’
‘No. They’re staying here.’
They’re home.
‘It’s just me.’
He put the suit on, pulled the hood over his head, sealed the faceplate and connected the air supply, then the soldiers led him back to the waiting helicopter, its engine beginning to whine in pitch as the rotors turned and began to pick up speed. He clambered back inside the cabin and sat down opposite a wary-looking Dr Calloway.
The speaker inside his hood crackled. ‘So, Prime Minister?’
Rex looked up at him.
‘What happened in there? What did you see?’
And that’s when he realized why the girl, Grace, had insisted he come and see. Words of explanation just weren’t going to be enough. He looked around at the cramped and clumsy confines of the helicopter’s cabin, its hard, primitive edges, the grime, and small blisters in the grey paint, the faint blooms of rust, and realized right then that he was seeing the crude mechanics of a redundant form of humankind.
The men in the cabin with him were just lumbering water-sack giants held in an approximate shape by clunky, brittle, calcium frames and protected – barely – by a pink membrane sheath that creased and sagged and mottled and aged all too quickly. He was looking around at the crumbling remnants of the past.
Mankind 2.0 is waiting patiently for us down there to wake up and join them.
‘What did I see?’ replied Rex.
Calloway nodded eagerly.
‘I don’t even think I can begin to describe what I saw. But I know what I’m going to say when we get back.’
‘What?’
Rex was aware the soldiers were listening in on this conversation too. They were on an open channel inside the helicopter. ‘We shouldn’t be afraid of the virus.’
The tips of all three nuclear missiles dipped further and their altitude began to rapidly decrease in twenty-metre increments. Their paths, parallel for the majority of their journey began to diverge slightly, one heading to the rear end of the viral island, one to the front, one to the very middle.
Two seconds before impact with the leathery, lumpy ground, they detonated.
For a few moments, three miniature suns blinked into existence above the empty ocean, dazzling in their intensity. They rose up, lifted carefully by columns of superheated steam and framed by concentric garlands of shockwaves that stirred and combed out the few natural clouds in the vicinity.
The entire mass of the viral island above water was incinerated in a nanosecond, tens of thousands of tons of nearby water instantly converted to steam. In the superheated area of ground zero, a void was left behind by the rapidly rising balls of flame and columns of steam.
The nanosecond passed. The sea crashed in on itself, covering over the gory, excavated gouges of the island.
The enormous underbelly of the viral structure, having survived the initial heat and shockwave of the blasts, now had salt water cascading down through its delicately built insides. Raw organic fluid, un-leathered, unprotected, began to bubble, boil and disintegrate. Flow-tubes a metre in diameter that were this living structure’s arterial system ruptured and spilled their superhighways of liquid traffic into internal spaces. Scout, maintenance, storage, research and message virals in their trillions were inundated by a descending tidal wave of salty ocean water as it roared downwards from cavity to cavity, internal walls of flesh and fibre corroding and tearing along the way.