by North, Geoff
There were a billion people living on the planet at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The line swung up gradually into the twentieth century, and then spiked almost straight up somewhere between the nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties. Dwayne tapped where the red line intersected with the beginning of the twenty-first century. “This is where the Tenth planned to cut off expansion. Sure, they’d planned other interruption points, the first way back in 1883 after Krakatoa blew its top. Did you know average world temperatures dropped 2.2 degrees for a year or two after that?”
Louie wanted him to slow down. He was rambling, talking too fast. Dwayne kept going.
“They had this ingenious idea to poison crops around the world at the same time. You get it? They could exterminate hundreds of millions and blame it all on a stupid volcano.”
Louie finally interrupted. “Slow down. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What is the Tenth?”
Dwayne grinned, revealing yellowish-brown teeth that hadn’t been brushed since before he’d last changed his underwear. “The Earth’s population back at the start of the nineteenth century was one billion, or thereabouts somewhere. The wealthiest one per cent of humanity consisted of ten million people. One per cent of that figure is one-hundred thousand. Now those folks were pretty darned rich, but one per cent of that group were filthy stinking rich. That’s one thousand folks worldwide controlling most of everything. A fraction of those people—we’re down to ten percent of that last number now, around one hundred individuals—realized the world’s population was set to explode with the expansion of the Industrial Revolution. They foresaw the coming of the Automobile Age, and knew manned flight wouldn’t be far behind.”
Louie leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know what you’re talking about. It was called the Bilderberg Group. A bunch of rich pricks that met once a year to discuss world economics and shit like that. People have been accusing them of running everything since before I was born.”
Dwayne shook his head emphatically. “This isn’t the Bilderberg Group... those guys were peasants compared to the Tenth. In fact, it was the Tenth that allowed them to keep meeting annually.” He paused and considered what he’d just said. “I guess there won’t be any meeting this year, hey?”
He closed the graph and opened another image. It was a collection of black outline company logos. Not logos, Louie realized, leaning forward for a better look. They were more like crests—symbols associated with some of the most secretive societies that ever existed. There were twelve of them, split into two vertical columns, connected by arrows pointing up. Louie recognized some of them; The Illuminati, Freemasons, and Skull and Bones. The Bilderberg Group was there as well. Others he’d never seen before. He had to read the names of each printed below the official crests. There were the Knights of Pythias and the Knights of the Golden Eagle. Some of the ancient-looking symbols had even stranger-sounding names; The Priory of Sion, Thule Society, and Rosicrucians. Louie followed the crests and titles and arrows up to a thirteenth crest sitting all on its own at the top. It was a big letter X with The Tenth printed below.
“Roman numeral for ten,” Dwayne said. “The Tenth isn’t big into punchy designs. They’re the most powerful clandestine organization in the world... and the most secretive. Their main goal for the last two hundred years has been to bring the world’s population down to a more manageable level. The magic number is half a billion. They could control that many people spread across all the continents. The planet’s natural resources could last another ten thousand years so long as we weren’t reproducing like rabbits.”
Louie spoke the name again. “The Tenth. Ten percent of humanity’s thousand wealthiest. A hundred greedy fuckers attempting to control the fates of everyone else.”
“They did more than attempt. They succeeded.”
“No they didn’t. The world went to war. Billions of people have died. The Tenth may have gotten closer to that magic number of theirs, but they didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.” Louie’s eyes were beginning to water from sitting too close to Dwayne’s stench. He leaned back, pulled the fur hat from his head and covered his nose and mouth. He breathed the muffled warmth in deeply.
Dwayne didn’t seem to care, or perhaps he was too far gone to realize how badly he smelled. “Tensions between the world governments have been mounting for decades. The Tenth had been steering them in this direction all along. The Tenth planted that last psycho General in North Korea three years ago. He got inside Jong-un’s head and finally convinced him to nuke Beijing.”
“That’s how it started?” The hat fell away from Louie’s face. “North Korea hit China?”
“Didn’t you know?”
Louie shrugged, trying to recall the final days of civilization. “It all happened so fast, the news channels were jumping from one crisis to the next... North Korea, South Korea, the Middle East, Africa. I remember people being scared, and then finally just giving up on trying to keep caught up.”
“It wasn’t as disorganized as it seemed. China wasn’t even going to strike back, but the Tenth had some heavy influence in Moscow. Russia was quickly convinced eastern China was about to be invaded, so they bombed the coastlines of both countries. Eastern China and North Korea were wiped out in a matter of minutes. But it didn’t stop there, heck no. The Tenth moved fast. They convinced Israel that Iran had been given Russia’s permission to attack. Ten minutes later Israel sends its nukes east and it’s goodbye Tehran. Britain, France, and Germany panic, and they begin nuking Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.”
“That’s bullshit,” Louie argued. “The world couldn’t fall apart that quickly.”
“It can and it did.” Dwayne tapped the edge of his keyboard. “I can show you all of it right here.”
Louie shook his head. He didn’t want to see. He placed the hat back over his face. “How did the States get involved?”
“An operative working for the Tenth re-programmed one of the British nukes to strike further north than its intended target in Turkey. Instead of Ankara, it blasted into the heart of Kiev. Russia went after London—naturally, and the United States defended its closest ally. The rest is history.”
Dwayne opened picture over top of picture on the monitor for Louie to see. The first was of an obliterated Paris. The only way left to identify the French city was from the twisted bottom half of the Eiffel Tower on a flattened horizon. Next came London, a smoking, grey mess with a blackened Thames River snaking through the rubble. Dwayne rattled off names as the images popped up—Berlin, Moscow, New York, Tokyo, Copenhagen.
Louie finally looked away. Humanity had blasted itself back into the Stone Age, but there had at least been survivors. The Tenth may have gotten what they wanted, but Louie had taken it a step further. Those three or four hundred million humans left living after the attacks now had something even more terrifying to contend with. LDV-3. The Tenth had whittled mankind’s numbers down. Louie had unleashed the weapon of its extinction.
He stood up out of his chair. “The Tenth didn’t see how it would all end though, did they? As powerful as they thought they were, they couldn’t have foreseen a bunch of ticks wiping out the rest of us.”
Dwayne powered his computer down and turned the monitor off. “You’re talking about Lyme Disease Variant 3, aren’t you?”
Louie almost fell back into the chair. No one could have possibly known about that. Louie was the only person left alive on the planet that knew of the work being conducted far beneath the ground in the Winnipeg Disease Study Center. “How... how do you know about that?”
“The LDV studies were funded by the Tenth. The question is, how did you know about it?”
Louie could feel the sweat building on his forehead beneath the fur hat. His mouth had gone dry, and his heart was pounding. I was the only one that made it out of there. The only one that knew. I let the ticks out into the world. Me, Louie Finkbiner. No one else knew. No one else can ever find out the t
ruth. The gun was still in his hand. He knew what had to be done. But there was more he needed to learn. Louie lowered the weapon to his side. “I was employed at the DSC in Winnipeg. I... we were working on the LDV project the day the first bombs fell.”
“Really?” Dwayne Chubey was grinning. “You don’t look all that smart to me.”
“Fuck you. I’m smart enough not to sit in my own shit.”
Dwayne’s smile widened and his eyes glistened. “You got me there.” He stood up and Louie raised the gun again. “Easy, guy. I’m not accusing you of anything. I don’t care who you were or what you worked on before the war. Although I have to admit I was a little shocked to discover the ticks were released after the nuclear strikes. It seemed like overkill to me.”
“The Tenth planned to release LDV-3 before the bombs?”
“They would’ve preferred no nuclear confrontation at all. It destroys too much infrastructure and damages the environment for centuries. LDV was much more manageable. They could bring the numbers down, and then introduce the vaccine at the right—”
Louie pushed him hard against the desk. “There’s a cure? A way to fight the ticks?”
“No cure,” Dwayne said, looking down at the end of the gun planted into his chest. “If you get the disease, you’re toast. There is a vaccine, however... I thought someone working on the project would’ve been aware of that.”
“There were different levels of security,” Louie said, lying, but telling the truth at the same time. “We were all working on the same thing with different clearances.”
Dwayne nodded. He still had that grin plastered across his bearded face that suggested he thought Louie was bullshitting him. “Would you like to stop worrying about mindless corpses chasing after you? No more running, no more insidious little ticks heading your way. Would you like that?”
“I don’t... I don’t get what you mean.”
“Yeah, I think you do.” Dwayne pushed the barrel of the gun away slowly. “The vaccine... It’s running through me, and I can give it to you, too.”
Chapter 12
Hayden had fallen on top of Caitlan, clutching the shoulder where he’d been shot. The men in the white haz-mat suits and white helmets were at the bottom of the steps, aiming both guns at his face. None of this made any sense, he thought, preparing to die. They had returned to Tarantan to help the family they’d found in the school library. That same family was lying at his feet now, burned into a pile of black bones and steaming innards. At least he and Caitlan would die faster—bullets through the brains instead of being burned alive. It was a small consolation.
A gun fired, but Hayden wasn’t shot between the eyes. One of the men in the white suits dropped to his knees, the gun falling from his fingers. The interior of his helmet had turned red. His brains had splattered all over the inside of the plastic face plate. He teetered backwards, and fell all the way to the ground.
Hayden saw Angela appear out of the smoke holding a gun of her own in both hands. The second man started to turn in her direction, finally realizing what had happened. He was a half second too late. Angela shot him twice in the chest and once in the crotch.
“The van,” Hayden gasped, trying to push himself up off of Caitlan. “I heard... heard Amanda screaming from the van. The baby... is in there too.”
Angela pulled him all the way to his feet and they lifted Caitlan up as well. She was swimming in and out of consciousness, her eyes rolling inside her skull. Hayden wrapped one of her arms over his good shoulder and started down the steps. The woman’s head sagged, and he hugged her close to his side so she wouldn’t fall back down. “I’ll be okay,” he told Angela. “Get to the van, get those kids out of there.”
Angela started for the vehicle.
This is what you’ve been waiting for, Angie. You have a weapon, and now you have a set of wheels. Kill the kids inside and run those other two morons over.
Angela was less than ten steps from the van when it started up and pulled away. She shot at it until the gun was empty, risking the lives of the children inside. The vehicle disappeared into the smoke. Hayden and Caitlan limped up behind her. She looked at Hayden helplessly.
“Not your fault,” he said. “Help me with her.”
Angela took Caitlan’s other arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. The woman’s stomach was soaked in blood. Angela looked up into Hayden’s eyes, preparing to tell him they had lost Nicholas as well, when a stream of bright orange light erupted out of the smoke in front of them. A line of flame roared horizontally across their path, consuming the shrubs bordering the school playground.
A second jet of fire shot straight up from across the street. It was like a volcano erupting before Angela’s eyes. Two forms appeared out of the churning smoke. More men in heavy, cumbersome suits were clomping towards them, holding massive guns in their arms.
Not guns, Angela realized. Flame throwers.
They’re burning the town to the ground, girl, and you’ll be next if you don’t get moving.
A third figure materialized out of the smoke to Angela’s right, shooting a thirty-foot long whip of fire before him. They were surrounded on three sides. Hayden and Caitlan were injured badly, they could barely move.
Leave them there, Angie. Drop that fat bitch and run.
There was a loud roar somewhere behind her. Angela spun around, expecting to be engulfed in a fourth jet of fire, but saw headlights instead. Owen Blakey’s red truck screeched to a sideways stop in front of the three. The driver’s window was already open. “Don’t just stand there!” Fred Gill yelled. “Get your asses in here!”
Angela pushed the two into the backseat as the first stream of blistering hot fire licked at the truck’s back tires. Fred slammed down on the accelerator before Angela could shut the door. The vehicle jumped ahead, its rear bumper and tailgate on fire.
They sped out of Tarantan for a second time. The twins Angela had promised to watch over, and the son Hayden had sworn to protect, were left behind with the burning and the dead.
Chapter 13
Three cars passed by Grace as she walked along the highway. She held her thumb up as the first one approached, and nearly got run over. Grace jumped into the ditch as it charged towards her without slowing. She saw a blur of someone giving her the finger as it flew past. She stayed well over onto the shoulder as the next vehicle came along an hour later. They slowed a bit, and six mournful, scared faces studied her on the way by. Grace wagged her gun back and forth instead of her thumb as the third sped by half an hour after that. She shot her gun empty into the receding taillights. Needless to say, they opted for speeding up over slowing down.
Grace kept on going. She was warm, but hungry. She had survived an extremely traumatic set of events at Odessa, and had decided to do whatever it took to keep on surviving. The next vehicle that came along would stop no matter what. Grace would stand in the center of the road, point her gun at the windshield, and make whatever stupid driver was sitting behind the wheel stop.
It was getting dark when she heard the motor of a fourth vehicle approaching behind her. She turned and started walking backwards as the head lights appeared on the horizon. An amber light was flashing on top. At first Grace thought it was a rescue vehicle, an ambulance perhaps. Ambulance lights are red, she thought, and usually accompanied with sirens. The thing rumbling towards her was too slow. It got closer. Not an ambulance... a grader.
Grace stood in the center of the highway, spreading her legs slightly in what she hoped was a defiant-looking stance, and aimed her gun at the approaching machine. The weapon was empty, but the driver didn’t know that. The grader couldn’t move quickly enough to avoid a barrage of bullets. He would stop, she knew he would.
The yellow monster continued its twenty mile an hour approach along the road’s center, bearing down on Grace as if she hadn’t even been seen. He can see me. He’ll stop. He doesn’t have a choice. The machine finally geared down and began to slow. Grace could make out the operator
’s form sitting high up in the windowed cab.
He was big. Big enough that he had to hunch forward on the seat to make room for the oxygen mask fitted over his head. Grace regretted emptying the gun on the last vehicle she had seen. It would’ve been a glorious feeling to shoot him through the cracked eye plate of that retched-looking thing.
The grader came to a halt six feet before her. The cab door swung open and Roy climbed out. There was a blood-soaked piece of cloth wrapped around the leg where Fiona had shot him. He moved slowly and awkwardly down the metal rungs, grunting inside his mask with each pained step.
Roy limped around to the front of the grader and stood before her. “Found this machine in another storage building back at the mine. It’s a lot faster than it looks. I could’ve put it into high gear, dropped the blade, and cut you in half before you had time to jump clear.”
The gun was still gripped firmly in both of Grace’s hands and pointed directly at his covered face. “But you didn’t because you’re such a sweetheart.”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am.” Roy pulled a handgun from his back pocket and trained it on her. “And you don’t have the guts to shoot me, or you would’ve done it by now.”
Grace recognized the weapon as one of Fiona’s. He had found the woman’s stash. What else had Roy been up to since she’d escaped from Odessa? She pictured him retuning to Fiona and doing to her bloody corpse what he had threatened to do to her multiple times. Great. This is just wonderful. Once he realizes my gun’s empty... So why hadn’t he shot her yet? Why didn’t he run her over with the grader? Perhaps there was a still a chance. Don’t let him know you’re out of bullets.
Grace tucked her gun away into one of the parka’s pockets. “And you could’ve killed me when you pulled up. But we’re not finished with each other yet, are we? As sick as it sounds, we really do make a good team.” Roy remained silent and let her talk some more. “We can catch up to Louie and do to him what we did to Fiona. The little asshole deserves it, and worse. I had enough guts to slit Fiona’s throat wide open, don’t go doubting I couldn’t do it again.”