One (Alone Book 3)

by Mercedes Prunty

  Chapter thirteen…

  Old dusty made it to the outskirts of Hamburg, we had been running on fumes for a few miles but she finally gave up the ghost near the centre. It had taken us around eight hours after taking a few detours and hiding from creatures and other humans, we really didn’t need any more setbacks even if some were friendly’s but now we had at least made it this far things were finally looking up.

  The part of town we had hit was full of apartment blocks, trees lined the roads. I had to admit this part of the world didn’t look merely as decayed and as much like a disaster zone as Britain and France had looked. Ricardo’s warning echoed in my mind, saying it was dead but although it was empty it didn’t look as dead as other places we had seen. Everything still looked fairly intact and normal, other than the huge wall that separated the border which had a gaping hole in that we came through. I could see some greenery had started to get out of control and climb up a few of the buildings but mostly this place just looked empty.

  “What happened here?” Damien asked holding his gun up and looking around, “This place looks untouched”.

  Kian cleared his throat, “Germany was one of the last places to be attacked. They held up a deal with the E.U or the now E.L for a long time after the acid rain attack in the UK but like everywhere else they ran out of money, supplies and ideas, they wanted to go it alone without the presence of the E.L on their backs all the time. They even built a wall to keep the creatures out from the other countries and my employers back at Svalbard sent weapons, guns and ammo frequently to help them but when they decided to go alone all the help stopped. They even used to send out the choppers to keep the wall safe but then one night they sent the helicopters on a new mission…To tear down the new wall and to let the creatures in”.

  We all fell silent.

  “Most people fought back and kept the monsters at bay, they had trained themselves for that very moment but there was no protection from the gases they pumped into their air zone. The helicopters came with canisters and let them drop and explode sending the lethal gas everywhere. Some people back at base laughed it off and said how it served the Germans right for all what they done to the Jews all those years ago but this, this was disgusting, inhumane and downright bastardish. The Germans didn’t deserve that, the British didn’t deserve it and neither did the rest of the world”.

  I felt for Kian, he had been there employed by these people but he hated what was happening all what they had done, “At least now you can help us take them down, they will pay for all they have done”, I placed my hand on his shoulder and he brought his hand up and held it.

  “I hope so”.

  “I know so”.

  He smiled.

  “Come on let’s go”, Damien said, “This place gives me the creeps”.

  He had a point, the air was rather eerie around here, like we were being watched the whole time. Millions of eyes all watching our every move but the place was empty there was no one around watching.

  As we walked I couldn’t help but ask him, “Kian, you said gas canisters?”

  “Right?”

  “Well we were attacked by bombs that caused acid rain to fall from the skies, they melted our people down to nothing, our friends, our families, all turned to mush and gore and if it didn’t kill them then they turned and killed others”.

  He nodded, “Yes Britain was hit with the acid rain, so was France and a few other countries but over the years they have changed the virus slightly. Not completely, not like they have now in the lab, the new version they want to unleash now is horrific beyond belief even after all you have seen and witnessed but the one in Germany was different, it was different to yours”.

  “Does that mean the creatures will be different here?” Cain asked, he held his gun tightly a look of pure fear written over his young face.

  Kian shrugged, “Maybe, I don’t know”.

  But I had a bad sinking feeling, Kian had mentioned that the virus now also attached to the animals and turned them too. What the hell were we going to find out here?

  ~

  Dr Aksel Enok sat in his private home in the ‘Town’, his was a typical American looking home with a wraparound porch, bay windows and slick clean wooden slats. He sat on the porch sipping his glass of mild whisky and reading through the late scientist’s notes once again. He wanted to know how much information that man from the security personnel and indeed the scientist’s daughter knew of what was going on in the labs. Most of the scientists knew very little about what they were working on but some knew more than others, those that his uncle and the officials deemed trust worthy. Dr Enok knew though that the notes might not have only been seen by the daughter’s eyes and her counterpart, oh no, he knew that the rebels would have snuck in and made copies of it to share between their networks, putting them back in place to fool him and his uncle. Although the CCTV showed no rebels in the scientist’s lab, that didn’t mean they hadn’t found a way to hide from the camera to look at the notes. But now he had them and he would be the last person to see them.

  What he couldn’t fathom was how there was even a rebellion in this place. Yes they had built it to hold just over 2,000 occupants and currently the ‘Town’ was home to just over half of that, he thought the exact amount was 1,233 last time Enok checked the stats but he couldn’t be sure, maybe the rebels had more people hiding in the walls, under the floor boards and in the woodwork. There always seemed to be a never-ending tide of rebels, even with the kidnapping of them and most being purposefully experimented on to show peeping eyes what they could do to them they still kept coming.

  He sighed, it didn’t matter if they had read the scientist’s notes as they already knew what was going on in the labs and what he and his people could do with the virus but it was the civilians that had no clue. There were around 100 scientists here from all around the world, the rest were civilians and security personnel, all extra bodies that came with the scientists as their families, friends or just people who had been lucky enough to seek shelter here at some point.

  Although there was that many scientists not that many worked on the C.U.R.E, others found ways to keep this place alive, keeping the plant life down here alive so they could breathe along with the large air vents that sucked in oxygen from the outside but if there was an emergency out there, they could at least survive down here and shut off the vents to the outside for a while.

  “Aksel”, his uncles voice broke his trance, he turned and peered through the fake lighting which was causing an afternoon glare from the fake sun in the sky. The temperature here was great and Aksel only needed his shorts and vest on.

  “Dearest uncle what pleasure do I owe this meeting to?”

  “You read the notes yet?”

  Enok nodded, “Of course, many times now”, he flapped the papers in front of his uncle.

  “And?”

  “Nothing, he mentions a few things but nothing the rebels don’t already know about”, he lied, he didn’t want his uncle to know what the rebels could really know about the C.U.R.E.

  “Good”, his uncle said stroking his grease backed hair, “Now destroy it”.

  Aksel nodded, “As you wish”.

  And with that his uncle turned and left heading back to the home he shared with his new wife. His real wife, Aksel’s very own Aunt Mo had been struck with a terminal illness five years before the attack on the world and had perished but his uncle deemed it fine to start dating six months later and marry his young whore of a wife who on many occasions had given Aksel the come on, she used to laugh that she was in love with the two Enok’s but he knew, she was just an old Amsterdam whore. But he had slept with her anyway just to get one over on his uncle, they had both been drunk, completely her idea not his and they had made love in their marital bed. His uncle had returned and Aksel had slipped unseen out the window. The whore never spoke to him again, ashamed of what she had done but his dear uncle was none the wiser and would only find out when Aksel saw fit to kil
l him off. Which he knew would be soon, oh so very soon.

  Walking through his home he lit the small fire place he had in his front room, it was contained in a glass container and was mainly for image purposes only, ventilation had been an issue but a few of the more important homes like his had special vent systems to take the smoke to the outside. He lifted the lid and threw in the paperwork and watched as the flames licked at the words on the pages, he was still reading them until the last piece turned to charcoal.

  ~

  I sat with Kian in an old apartment block, we had checked it for any creatures and found none so now like always we sat as a group eating what was left of our supplies and warming ourselves by huddling up to one another.

  “So Kian, what can you really tell us about this, place?” Damien asked, “I wanna know what these clowns are like, so we know how to take em down”.

  “They are cruel and sadistic, but there are only about 100 scientists there, the rest are civilians”.

  “Civilians? Why?” Kaley asked confused.

  “To keep up appearances, not many people know what goes on in the labs”.

  “And what does go on in the labs?” I asked, “We want to know everything you know Kian, everything”.

  Kian nodded, “Ok…the truly devious minds of what is left of the E.L have sections of scientists, ones they tell everything to and others that know nothing, not even really what they are working on. They have been told to work on a cure but they have no idea what the cure really means”.

  “Is it even a cure?” Ruth asked.

  “No, C.U.R.E stands for … Creation of Universal Rabies Evolution, it is in fact a newer version of what started this whole messed up crap on the world, the cure is the disease”, Kian said anger making his nostrils flare, “The rain, the acid rain was a scientific breakthrough for them they had found out how to transfer a virus through vapour, water and into droplets of rain. They tried the gas canisters out on Germany but it was decided that the Acid Rain worked much better than that. That is what they are going to go for again when they are ready to attack the rest of the world and the world that has already fallen”.

  “So the cure isn’t a cure at all, the cure is the damn virus?” Damien snorted, “Well I’ll be damned, so they have no intention of making a cure?”

  “Not a real one, they have something they claim is a cure back at the lab for their own people, but it’s not mainstreamed for everyone down there, just the big wigs and that’s it. They didn’t want it widely available and they tell them all they are still working on it. There is literally 50 or so vials of the stuff for the main staff but no more, if the virus hit the ‘Town’ then the civilians would crash and burn”.

  “Town?” I said hoping he would extend his knowledge more.

  “The town in an underground housing community, hundreds of homes all built in a fake town, there is fake sky, fake sun, fake rain if they really want to just to make it feel like the people are really above ground. The facility itself is situated on a place on Earth where it see’s months of darkness on end, the cold turns the ground into an icy tundra which cannot be lived upon, not without difficulty. So they built everything underground, plus using the old ghost town of Pyramiden was the perfect disguise. They pretended to do repair works to the place as it had become a hot spot for tourists at one point but when the war hit no one went near it, it was too expensive so they could build to their hearts content but it was still a disguise they wanted to keep. To keep trespassers at bay but also where it is situated is so cold it would keep the creatures at bay too, only five in all these years have ever been spotted and even then they could have been let loose from the lab”.

  “So do we even have a chance in really getting there?” Damien said.

  “You keep me alive then yes, I know the emergency exits, I can get you all in unseen”.

  “Hang on, isn’t there like an ocean or something in the way of us getting there?” Ruth stated.

  Kian nodded, “Yes there is but there is a small base that we use to use to store spare plane and helicopter parts but there was always a couple that worked. As long as they left us some fuel we should be fine”.

  “And if they didn’t?”

  “Then we better hope you lot are strong swimmers”, he said it as a joke but no one laughed.

  “Kian”, I said and he looked at me, “If C.U.R.E means Creation of Universal Rabies Evolution then what does Rain stand for? The acid rain? Does that have a special name?”

  “It does”.

  Then Damien cut in, “What use is it for us to know? We don’t know shit about bio chemicals, we can’t make up a real cure”.

  “We don’t have to anyway”, Kaley butted in.

  “Then why are we going?” Damien’s girlfriend snapped.

  “There is a way for us to change this but I cannot say how all I know is that it will come to us when we get there, we don’t need a cure we just need…”

  “You”, I finished for her.

  She shrugged, “Yeah I guess just me”.

  “You’re not making sense?” Damien laughed nervously, “I know I saw something but it still doesn’t fully make sense to me, I thought even if I didn’t fully know you did”.

  “I don’t need to, you just need to know that we need to get there to make this…” she held her hands out to motion the world, “Better”.

  “Funny how now it doesn’t make sense to you, you now question it! But when it didn’t make sense to me earlier you just told me to accept it”, Ruth said harshly to Damien.

  He shrugged, “We needed something to believe in”.

  She sighed, “We had something”.

  “We’ve been over this Ruth. I thought you were ok with it all now?”

  She shrugged, “I wanted to be for you…I still am for you”.

  He smiled at her.

  Disregarding her I asked Kian again, “So what does it mean and where did it come from? The Rain”

  “That I don’t fully know what’s in it I’m no scientist but I do know what the letters stand for. For the recipe you would have to ask the Enok’s for that”.

  “Enok’s?”

  “The uncle and nephew who run the joint, the nephew is the head scientist and complete nutcase and his uncle is the head of the E.L and the facility”.

  “They sound like a lovely pair”, Damien smiled.

  “More flipping doctors”, I said.

  “Tell me about it”, Kaley sniffed, I knew that she was thinking of Ollie and how me and him had first met, at the hands of a crazy doctor.

  “But what I do know about what R.A.I.N means is this, Rabies and Acid Influenza Neurotoxin”.

  “This…this is all a form of Rabies? Not just the newer version?” I exclaimed

  He nodded, “Rabies mixed with flu and a few other chemicals”.

  “So that’s what made it spread so easily, from a bite wound and saliva. Rabies is highly contagious as is the Flu and putting them together…Well BANG”, Ruth clapped her hands together loudly.

  “So us that are infected are like rabid dogs?” I said it more to me than anyone else, “I guess that why when I go of on the creature mode I feel so animal inside”.

  Everyone just looked at me but I ignored them.

  “I guess it just explains a lot”, I shrugged, “They need to be taken down, we need to get there and kill them all”.

  “Some of the scientists are innocent”, Kian said, “Most don’t know what is going on”.

  “Then you can point them all out, we will evacuate the innocent and kill the evil”, I told him.

  “I hope so, I hope we can find a way to do that”, he looked haunted.

  Some of the others soon fell asleep, Kaley held onto Cain for me whilst I went to patrol the building. Kian sat up in another room sharpening some blades and checking over our supplies. When I came back I found him looking out of a broken window waiting for me.

  “Kian?”

  “I heard something, out there”,
he whispered.

  I came up to him and peered out, I sent out my feelers but felt nothing, “I can’t sense anything?”

  “Maybe it’s out of your range”, he stated.

  I nodded, “Could be”.

  “Stacie what you said earlier about you being animal”.

  I stayed quiet.

  “I don’t think you are like a rabid dog”, he turned to me and smiled.

  “That’s your opinion, others might disagree, the ones I have killed whilst I feel animal”.

  “You have only killed for a reason”.

  “Maybe sometimes it wasn’t the right one”, I sighed.

  “You can’t change what happened in the past Stacie”.

  “I know that”, I hissed annoyed at his obvious remark.

  “What I mean is you can’t change what happened in the past but the future is for the taking, you can make it whatever you want to make it”.

  I laughed, “How do you figure that out when it’s Kaley who dictates it to us?”

  “Just because she tells you things must happen a certain way doesn’t mean it has to happen that way. You can make up your own mind, she doesn’t control it…Not anymore…”

  “What did you say?” I asked my voice growing irritated and louder.

  “I could feel it when I first met you, she was inside your head telling you what to do but now…Since you went AWOL the vibe has changed in you. This is how I imagine you really are”.

  “I don’t understand?”

  He shrugged, “Guess you’re not meant to”.

  “Did she get inside your head too?” I asked.

  He nodded, “I could have helped Candice, at least let her not die alone but…She was in my head, I was on autopilot she was leading the way. I never said goodbye to Candice”.

  “I’m sorry”, I said feeling awkward, “How long had you two been together?”

  “We weren’t, she only spoke to me for the first time three days before we fled the facility but I felt like I at least owed her a friend in her last hour but I wasn’t there…She was…In my mind…”