Come Back

by George Erlynne

  "Marie!" The shaking wasn't doing her shoulder any good, but pain is a splendid stimulant and her eyes opened. They didn't like what they saw because she showed me teeth in a snarl. "Wake up." I snapped. "Why did you tell that silly sod Jules to fire at Melanee?"

  "She is a mutant." The voice was clear and surprisingly strong. "She is an abomination, a clone, a non-human. Such as her cannot be allowed to live and breed."

  "You're not reading the same Bible as Max and Selena. They want the whole world to be full of people like her."

  "Non!" The word came at me like a bullet. She moved and let out a yelp of pain. "Non." The word was softer now, almost a sob. "You do not understand, you are not a believer. The people they are making, yes? They will not be normal but they will 'ave immortal souls." She was beginning to hurt now, the pain was getting through the drugs. "But she will turn them into people like her, she will take away their souls."

  "Marie." I said gently. "You haven't been listening. She wants to save them, to make them like us, stupid, homicidal and destructive but human."

  "She will not." She gasped and such was the certainty in her voice that I glanced up to see Melanee's face watching us from the front seat. She had no expression, just a calm loveliness which gazed at me with mesmeric force, a vast intelligence inside the head of a classic beauty. For a fleeting instant, doubt attacked me. "She is manufactured. She cannot disobey. She has no soul." Marie screwed her face up in a rictus of pain. She was using up energy which she was going to need soon so I became brisk

  "We are going to land in minutes. You will have to walk through the woods and it's not going to be easy, you understand?" I stared down at her, not wanting to add what was swilling about in my conscience but I had forgotten how sharp she was except in character analysis.

  "David." The lines of pain smoothed and a smile appeared. "You leave me a pistol, eh? I solve your problem."

  "You will come with us." Melanee's even tones broke into our intimate chat. I was telling Marie politely that if she didn't keep up I would have to use up ammunition we couldn't spare but Melanee introduced a note of command. "David will help you and I will need you."

  Marie shook her head. She was hurting badly now but there was damn all we could do, so I clambered back to see the state of the war. Our friends were over us, cruising along at fifty-five thousand feet. Melanee's dark head bent close to mine, her smile going through me like a skewer. The doubts disappeared like panic-stricken ghosts. If she really was manufactured, the factory would be worth a visit. Marie had not seen, as I had, the woman, not the clone, the passionate lover, the personality which flowered in front of us, the soul if you like which emerged and wanted to be one of us.

  It was time to get ready. I put the landing spot in the nav computer, telling it to land this thing like a falling brick. The auto land program was not a facility I trusted and had never used but we had to be leaning up against the hatch ready to scoot off as soon as we hit dirt. They would know as soon as we departed, they had the equipment to tell who was who and when Melanee was out of the door then wham!

  I made Melanee carry the spare machine rifle and loaded her up with ammunition plus the medical box. Draping ammo belts round me, I heaved the pack containing the rest of our meagre stock of goodies on to my back and glowered at the screen.

  "Ten minutes." I grunted, hoping I had not forgotten something vital. It wouldn't do to smite one's forehead and remember the car keys when this heap was a pile of wreckage. Melanee started to look apprehensive, no doubt equations of human misbehaviour had added up in her head to the prospect of a desperate fight in near darkness. Evening was here and the night would be close behind. "You know the way to this hole in the ground?" I grated at her.

  A smile was all I got but the landing proximity tones chimed just then so I heaved Marie to her feet. We had bandaged the bad arm tightly and put it in a sling, swathing her with most of our remaining cloth. She had no shirt because the one she had was bullet ridden and blood soaked, not to mention the fact that we had torn it to pieces to get at the wounds. She leant against me as I put my arm round her waist. This was going to be fun, I said to myself. Marie's bare back was covered in sweat and she was trembling.

  The car shuddered as the best engine went into full power to boost the verticals. Worried, I peered at the view of the ground rapidly approaching. My hands twitched, wanting to take control but Melanee gripped my arm from the other side. The shuddering turned into heavy vibration followed by a considerable thud which made our knees flex.

  "We're down!" I yelled, banging the hatch control which hissed and swung open revealing a familiar glade seen in diminishing light, the sun having dropped below the trees. Deep shadows stretched across the clearing. The engines shut down with a dying whine of turbines but I had no time to worry about shut down procedures. Half lifting Marie, with Melanee helping from the other side we hopped down on to grass, long grass, thick and wet.

  "This way!" Melanee pointed to the dark forest, leading off. Marie was gasping, moaning but walking, head down with my arm still round her waist. The night air was cooling and we were fugitives, small ants scurrying along in an empty land. Soon, the dark canopy closed over us and the going got difficult, uneven and treacherous. Five minutes passed, then ten before a bright yellow flash penetrated the thick growth all round us. The concussion made the ground jump, trees swayed and a blast of evil air rushed through the forest, the smell of combustion suddenly arriving. We stood, dark shadows, unable to see each other's eyes. Our boats had just burnt.

  Marie's low moans turned to sobs, regular hiccups of pain. Twice she fell to her knees and would have crashed down on her face if I hadn't held her up. Repressing rising fury, I pulled her upright the second time, the dark outline which was Melanee in front of us putting out a hand which held my arm in a warm grip.

  "She's holding us up!" I whispered furiously. "The bastards will be after us like hell hounds!"

  "Leave me.... Mon Dieu...mort." Marie's legs were no longer able to keep her upright.

  "We need her. I need her, David and we cannot leave her to die."

  Cursing savagely, I slung the machine rifle and picked Marie up. She wasn't a big woman, she was petite and pretty, but she felt like a sack of cement and the forest was now as dark as a coal mine. I couldn't carry her in a fireman's lift because of her shoulder and already she was a dead weight.

  Melanee strode on while Marie put her good arm over my shoulder and hung on, still sobbing with pain. I was wishing I had shot her as well as Jules when somewhere behind us bright lights flickered far off through the trees. We carried on, making enough noise to wake all the bears in France, stumbling over roots, wading through spiky growth, panting heavily, and all the while those lights got closer.

  Melanee stopped so abruptly I walked into her causing Marie to cry out. Dimly seen, was a bank of earth covered in dark growth which Melanee was peering at like a fox sniffing young chickens. "It is here." She whispered. Dumping Marie on the ground, ignoring her hiss of pain, I joined Melanee in gazing at a lump of blackness.

  "There's an entrance under this? Christ, how do we find it?"

  She knelt down and started to tear away the short undergrowth. "It will not be very deep." She told me. "I saw the records. When they built it, they put drainage channels and a static shield to prevent vegetation."

  "That was ten thousand bloody years ago." I snarled, listening hard. "What the hell is this anyway?"

  "It is a ventilator shaft leading to the main control space."

  "A shaft? Three hundred feet down?"

  "Feet? Marie told me about metres."

  Suppressing a strong urge to kill something, I told Melanee that feet were older, more civilised, English and therefore superior. She was disposed to argue but flashing lights in the middle distance brought clarity of thought. Taking out her knife she prodded the ground as if expecting a minefield. Marie was reduced to pants of misery but if our new friends had infra-red detectors they would s
ee us sticking out like searchlights in a dungeon, so Marie's troubles faded into the background as I made ready, wishing I had phosphorous grenades. Nothing like a dose of third degree burns to deter would be perpetrators.

  "Hurry up!" I hissed at Melanee.

  "Help me." Was the muffled response. Scuttling to see what she was doing, I found her with one arm down a deep hole in the ground. "It is mm stuck? Will not move."

  Shoving her aside, I felt for the magic whatsit. "We are stuck." I grunted, groping. "And we'll be here forever soon.... ah!" A bar, distinct and metallic inserted itself into my grip.

  "There was a seal." Melanee whispered in my ear. "I heard the air come out."

  "Probably my blood pressure." I told her, heaving mightily and hoping that ten millennia had not welded the locking mechanism. Sealed? Pressurised? No corrosion? Stars appeared in front of my eyes, my arm felt as if it was parting company from the rest of me, but a movement made me redouble an effort that was already over my puff limit. Squirming to get two hands on the bar, the noise I made must have annoyed every pig within miles but it moved again, a groaning, grinding sensation creeping up my arm. Earth slithered aside. A sudden snap and a circular mound of detritus and leaf mould lifted up to reveal a gaping black orifice.

  There had to be access ladders, rungs in the side. Hustling Melanee down, despite her loud squeak of apprehension at the prospect of dangling over a three-hundred-foot tube, I scooped up Marie. She had to go over my shoulder, there was no carrying a babe in arms down that shaft, I had to have hands free.

  She screamed. Not loudly but an agonised sob that must have carried because the lights all became still. They were close now, maybe fifty yards, well within gunshot, but they wouldn't shoot, not yet, not until they could be sure who was who. Marie fainted, I think, when I slung her over the shoulder and clambered awkwardly down, feeling with my feet for rungs which I trusted were all the way down. The hatch - that was what it was - an airtight cover made of special steel alloy, swung down with a muffled clang. I shoved the bar with all the strength I had left in one arm. It wouldn't take them long to work out where we were but every second helped.

  "David!" Her voice had a hollow note, booming up from the depths.

  "I'm in. Get going. Climb down, don't stop!"

  Marie was getting heavier by the minute. Below me, a steady clanking note proclaimed Melanee edging her way down. Three hundred feet, maybe it was more? A hundred yards. An easy stroll but Marie made me lean away from the rungs every new step, transferring the grip one handed. After a time, I began to wonder how much longer before I dropped her on Melanee. My breath was so wheezy they must have heard it up top. Rung after rung, a foot between them? It felt like a yard soon because my legs were getting shorter and thinner.

  Echoing down this hole in the ground, a loud bang followed by a questing light, a white light, powerful and blinding, came from above, a pinpoint of brightness. It was a considerable help, allowing us to see what the hell we were doing. A flash and a gunshot boomed out, the round screaming past me, striking sparks from the metal walls. Loud shouts stopped the stupidity but the light stayed on for minutes while, presumably, a tactical conference went on to decide whether anyone was going to climb down after us and shake hands with my machine rifle. Clearly, the idea had its spiky points because the light went out and a clang told me the opening had been shut.

  It took us an eternity but was probably not more than half an hour. The bottom was a flat surface in stygian darkness. Collapsing in this convenient dry shelter, I let Melanee know that my services were not available for some little time. Marie moaned, so someone was in agreement. She felt wet, a sticky kind of wetness over her chest and back. The wounds had opened up again but there was nothing we could do for her. Melanee hissed at me to stay still and padded off. Did she have more mutations than we knew of? Could she see in absolute darkness? The question answered itself when a thud followed by a cry of pain informed us she had walked into a wall.

  Presently, it seemed my imminent death was postponed, allowing me to start thinking, a bad habit. If the tube we had come down was the only way in then our chums were not coming down with me at the bottom cuddling a machine rifle. No one was that dim.

  Time passed. Shuffling and scratching sounds from a receding distance told me Melanee was exploring. I assumed she had the blueprints of this installation in her head and would know where every rivet was, so I left her to it and poured water down Marie's throat. Now she felt burning hot, as well as being covered in blood. She wasn't going to last long unless we could find some kind of help.

  It felt as if two nights had passed by, a never-ending passage of time in total darkness with the painful breath and faint moans of Marie keeping me company. She was past speech now, just hanging on to a very thin thread of life. Then, when the emptiness and loneliness of this place was starting to get at me, in a far distance there was light, a tiny pinpoint which stood out in the close darkness like a searchlight. Presently, outlines of a long corridor or passage grew into focus. Along this tunnel which diminished in perspective to a small square, a figure was walking swiftly towards us.

  "Come."

  Chapter 29

  HOME TRUTHS

  She had acquired a light which shed unsympathetic illumination over the bloodstained figure of Marie. My own apparel had suffered in recent times, so that we appeared to be very dishevelled and blood spattered saviours of the human race. Melanee, naturally, seemed cool and tidy, apart from an expression of mild apprehension which she bestowed upon me.

  "Quickly, David. Can you carry her? It is a short distance."

  "Come a hell of a long way already." I muttered ungraciously, but gathered up Marie with some effort. Her head hung back, eyes closed, her torso covered in blood which had seeped down from the shoulder. "She ain't going to last much longer." I pronounced, watching Melanee gather up our collection of firearms. "Too much blood loss."

  Melanee simply bestowed one of her thin smiles on me and marched off, leaving me to grip the slithery flesh of Marie's upper half firmly, say something to inattentive Gods and follow. The corridor, it was a tunnel really, was regular and smooth. Ducts and piping were embedded in the ceiling, the metalwork showing evidence of decay. Even if this had been climate controlled, oxygen had been at work. Melanee, several paces in front, stopped eventually at a door which was obviously pressure sealed, a complicated, artificial compound airlock. Dim lights glowed on a small touch screen which she tapped away at, causing a loud hiss and hum. The hatch, it was a highly sophisticated security entrance, I recognised the design, it opened silently, allowing her to step over a pronounced lip, beckoning me to follow.

  The room was vast, the low ceiling making it seem like a giant supermarket with all the contents removed except low freezer cabinets, and that was what they were, lines of them stretching away in perspective to a far point. A blaze of white light from overhead tubes cast a pitiless, clinical glare on to endless rows of incubators. Standing with an inert Marie still in my arms, I peered down into the nearest unit. Tiny forms, frozen limbs in miniature, enclosed in what seemed to a be a row of ice cubes with a cobweb of wiring surrounding them. They swam in solid fluid, eyes closed, diminutive hands unmoving in suspended life.

  Each unit had many, scores. Gazing over the vista in front of us, the full impact of this obscene experiment hit me like a lead weight. How many were there here? Thousands? A million? Whose children were they?

  "They are ours."

  Melanee's voice contained a quality of understanding and sorrow, but there was determination and an echo of prophecy. I couldn't answer, it was too much. How could we rebuild a whole world?

  "We must put Marie into a medi-unit. There are many still on line." She walked away. Marie was nearly dead, I could feel it, but the unit was alive. Carefully stripping off her remaining clothes, I put her on the bed, Melanee giving out precise instructions. Her knowledge was still growing and I hoped it included how the hell we were going to get out o
f this nursery

  without getting shot. She frowned at a screen showing lots of moving graphs, tapped commands and stepped back. "She will be revived and the tissue regenerated. It is not difficult."

  Grunting, I cast a look round whilst draping the ammunition belts round me and setting the seeker chip on the machine rifle. "What now?"

  "We have to go to the control room one level down."

  "Down?"

  "This way."

  "Wait a Goddamned minute! Is there another entrance from upstairs?"

  "Oh yes. That is why we must hurry."

  "What!" I yelled but I was talking to myself because she had trotted off at high speed. Clanking with weaponry I loped after her, telling myself this would all be in the history books for the new generation to read and I would be a hero, a mythical figure, a giant of supernatural powers. I hoped the truth would not leak out before I had the opportunity to write the books myself but meanwhile, what the hell was Max and co doing? Melanee's figure disappeared down a ramp which ended in another of those formidable doors. Puffing heartily, trying not to drop the pack containing all our worldly goods, I sagged in after her and slumped down on the nearest chair. The place was full of them, chairs I mean, all facing blank screens. Here, at any rate, the preservation technology had worked because the whole complex array of plasma screens and wall circuitry was in perfect order as were the chairs. Fishing out our sole supply of water I gulped some down. Melanee suddenly discovered how thirsty she was, swigged more than her share, bent down and kissed me with sultry passion and then passed her hands through her long hair in a gesture which brought Linda back to life.