The Veil

by Torstein Beck

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he laughed, ‘you won’t ever have to run. Each of us gets a 9mm Glock, so if things do get that bad… I’ll make it quick for you.’ He grinned coldly. ‘Both of you,’ he added, looking at Aaro. ‘Does that make you feel better?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Sorina said, shaking her head in disgust.

  Ek laughed and went back to his conversation.

  Aaro took Sorina’s hand and stepped over his bag. He embraced her tightly and she pressed her lips against his shoulder, her arms encircling him and squeezing hard. ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ she whispered into his coat.

  ‘We’ve got to.’ Aaro said with all the sternness he could muster. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. Everything will be fine.’

  But even as he said it, he didn’t believe it.

  In each other’s arms, time slipped by and suddenly Katarina’s voice was echoing from somewhere behind them. ‘We’re mobile in four minutes. If you need to need to piss or throw up, do it now. You’ve got five hundred miles to cover by nightfall. No stops. You’re on the clock, people. This starts now.’

  Sorina sighed and pulled away from Aaro, smiling weakly at him. ‘I’m gonna take her up on that — I think throwing up a little might make me feel better. God knows I feel like it.’

  ‘That’s just the hangover talking,’ Aaro said, returning it.

  She feigned a laugh and turned away from him. He stared after her but she didn’t look back. A couple of seconds later he heard Katarina speak to Ek and Bjork. He turned and as promised, she was handing each of them a gun case. She came to Aaro next and handed him two. His and Sorina's.

  ‘One modified nine millimetre Glock .45 semi-automatic pistol. Rifled barrels and integrated flash hiders. Magazines have the capacity for twenty rounds plus one in the chamber,’ she said with practised flatness. This was the tenth time she’d said it in the last five minutes.

  Aaro opened the case. It was filled with foam and sitting it a vacuum formed depression was the gun. It was sleek and matte black. He pulled it out and held it up, moving it around to inspect it. It had been a long time since he’d held one, and even longer since he’d used one.

  ‘The magazines are spring loaded,’ Katarina said, pointing to the grip. ‘Hit the release button and it’ll pop out. New one slides straight in. Remember, it’s not in 'til it clicks. There’s no safety and when does, it will self-load. Pull the trigger and a round will be pushed into the chamber. No need to cock it. Pull again and the gun will fire. There’s a laser sight fitted here and toggles on and off with this switch.’ She gestured to a little switch reachable with the trigger finger. ‘We’re giving each of you five full magazines. All hollow points. Should be plenty. Just in case. They’re already loaded in the mags — just put them in and you’re good to go. This is the suppressor here.’ She pointed to a long tube sitting next to the five black rectangles in the case next to the pistol space. ‘It screws straight into the barrel. You got all that?’

  Aaro nodded. The gun was redesigned for speed so that it could be withdrawn, loaded and fired in seconds by someone with zero experience of guns. He wasn’t sure if it made him feel better or more nervous to have it.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  Aaro pushed the Glock back in its case and Katarina pushed the lid shut.

  ‘Don’t pull this out unless you intend to fire it, alright? I don’t want any accidents and there’s no reason to have it out of the case in the truck. You got that?’ She looked at Aaro first, and then at Ek and Bjork, who barely acknowledged it. ‘I trust that you can relay all that to Strand when she gets back?’

  Aaro nodded.

  ‘Good.’ She checked her watch. ‘Two minutes. You ready?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be,’ he replied emptily, pushing the cases into his and Sorina’s packs. As he stood, Katarina hugged him. It was impulsive and rushed. She squeezed for a second and then let go. He hadn’t expected it and didn’t know what it meant. If it meant anything. A manifestation of her guilt, maybe? He couldn’t tell. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know, either.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said quietly before she brushed past him and walked into the open space in front of the two trucks.

  Aaro shouldered his pack and watched her. As she walked into the hangar, Sorina passed her from behind. She uttered the same good luck wish and touched her shoulder as she went by. Aaro hauled Sorina’s pack into the air and handed it to her as she approached. She smiled briefly, her skin still pale and flushed, and shouldered it too, standing next to Aaro. She held his hand and looked forward. Aaro could faintly smell the vomit but said nothing. He knew she was torn up inside and was putting on a brave face.

  He held her hand tighter and waited. Katarina looked at her watch, counting down the seconds. After a few more she turned and nodded towards the door. Another worker had appeared there and threw a switch next to a large roller. It shuddered and squealed upwards.

  The dim morning sun spilled in and a cold breeze came with it.

  The door scraped up until it was fully open, revealing an overgrown road through the plant beyond.

  Katarina cleared her throat. ‘Okay people, time to go. Good luck. We’ll be in contact with you constantly. Now get moving.’ She held her thumbs up at them, at a loss for anything else to do, and forced her mouth into a happy smile. It looked everything but.

  The cab doors slammed shut and the roaring diesel engines poured into life. Plumes of black smoke billowed from their upright exhaust pipes and the revs flared.

  Ek and Bjork were already packed and halfway up the back ramp. Aaro tugged Sorina’s hand and she reluctantly moved after them. Aaro wasn’t halfway into the trailer before they started driving.

  He dropped his pack into the back and turned to close the tailgate as they pulled into the grim light of day. He pushed and held the button, staring out of the closing back end at the disappearing hangar. He caught sight of Katarina one last time — she looked thoughtful, maybe sad. Maybe even hopeful. He didn’t have time to study her face before the door closed with a hiss and they were sealed in. The trailer jostled as they left the plant, and then they were outside and heading towards the city’s perimeter wall.

  Aaro walked further in, through the containment section, where the core would be sitting in less than two days time. It was a lead-lined steel box with a wall running across the bed that separated the compartments.

  Aaro pulled the hatch open and stepped through into the sleeping section. It was spartan, with two cots each side, a sink, camping stove and fridge across the far side. Above them, filling most of the front wall was a monitor. As Aaro approached, Ek touched a keypad next to it and the screen came to life. It split into two halves. The left displayed an in-cab cam, showing Sabina and Samuel jostling up and down as the truck hammered forwards. The right displayed the rear end of the other truck. In the centre of the screen was a crosshairs. Ek picked up a controller that wouldn’t have been out of place for a video game and began fiddling with the joysticks. The image jerked and panned across the landscape. With another push of a joystick, the screen moved a full three-sixty before returning to the truck in front.

  Ek smiled and ran his hand over his head, the short and thin crop of hair there sticking up at odd angles like hackled cat fur. ‘Fully operational.’

  Bjork made a mental note of it.

  ‘That’s the MG right?’ Aaro asked.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Ek seemed almost friendly now. Or at least professional. Aaro was glad of it. His hangover was starting to set in. ‘We have full control from here: remote firing. Lets Sab and Sam concentrate on the road,’ he replied, still testing the movements.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ Sorina said, glad that no one would need to be outside to operate it.

  ‘Yeah. High definition display, up to thirty times zoom, accurate to a thousand metres, and—’ he pressed a button and the screen changed again, this time painting the world in shades of green ‘—night vision.’ He press
ed again and it turned to a blur of blues and greens and reds. ‘Thermal.’ He pressed once more and the screen went black, displaying their surroundings in a static-like golden colour. The fizzing lines were detailed enough to make out the buildings but not much else. Aaro was puzzled but as the trucks emerged from the outer limits of the plant and back onto the city streets, the display became apparent. Running alongside the trucks were the sharp and detailed golden shapes of people wishing the convoy well.

  ‘Motion detection,’ Aaro said, in awe of the machine. ‘That’ll come in handy.’

  ‘It certainly will,’ Bjork snorted.

  ‘Can they hear us?’ Sorina interjected, pointing to Sab and Sam.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve got full two-way comms,’ Ek said, tapping on the keypad next to the screen. The silence was broken by the sound of classic rock and Sam singing along.

  ‘Hey guys, can you hear us?’ Ek called to the screen.

  Sab perked up on the monitor, wrestling the wheel. She seemed chipper. ‘Hey, yeah we can, coming through loud clear. Everything ok back there?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘So far so good,’ Ek replied. ‘How’re things looking?’

  'We’re about two or three minutes from the wall. I’ll give you a heads up when we’re about to go through.’ She smiled, glancing down at the GPS.

  ‘Okay, give us a shout when we’re there,’ he said, touching the keypad again and cutting them off.

  On screen, they both nodded and gave thumbs up. Ek hit another button and the sound of the engines filled the compartment.

  ‘These are the external mics. They allow us to hear everything going on outside the truck—’

  ‘Like sneaky fucking Varas skulking around in the night,’ Bjork interjected, thrusting the knife he was sharpening into the air in a stabbing motion. He twisted it brutally. Aaro hadn’t realised he’d even had it in hand. ‘We’ll leave them on at night and if anything comes creeping through the brush, we’ll hear it. These mics are sensitive, mounted low down to hear everything on the ground. It’s why the engine sounds so loud.’

  With that Ek cut the feed and silence fell in the trailer.

  Aaro and Sorina stared at the monitor, now back to normal and displaying the city as it passed by, the buildings growing smaller as they neared the perimeter.

  ‘We’re coming up on it now.’ Sab’s voice echoed around them. A second later they flew through a gate without slowing and then they were outside the walls. The buildings disappeared and the thick forests of a world devoid of humans filled the screen.

  The wonderment of the guns and the camera faded instantaneously. A thousand miles of road untravelled for more than a decade lay ahead, as well as God knows what else.

  But there was no turning back now.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE BEGINNING

  2108 AD

  With a moan of defeat, Aaro stumbled to an exhausted stop and leant forward, his hands on his knees. He drew a heavy breath and then let out a primal scream of anger. It seemed to be the only thing that made sense as the scene before him unfolded.

  He stood in front of the mess of cars on the roadway, looking ahead. On the far side of the bridge, cutting off his escape, quickly approaching around and over the tangle of vehicles, was a horde of Varas. Skulking forwards, claws scraping on metal and lips slapping on teeth. He looked back towards the trapped beast and the impenetrable wall of steel blocking the entrance to the other side. He couldn’t go back.

  Why? Why me? He couldn’t help but think it. Was this divine retribution? Should he have died last night? And this was overcompensation? Whatever it was, it was getting old. His fear had turned to exhaustion and rage. Aaro didn’t want to run. He was too tired and he’d almost died too many times today already. His stomach was still hurting, the blood now seeping through the wet bandages and into his shirt. His hair was tousled, silty and matted and his skin was dirty and scratched from the grime and asphalt under the car.

  The Varas advanced, and in a state of detachment, he calmly looked around for a pole, or a stick, or something to defend himself. And then he spotted it. Sitting at the side of the road, only twenty feet from him. A military jeep, and on the back, a mounted machine gun. He glanced at the pack, still a hundred meters away yet, and made for it. On autopilot, he scrambled up the bonnet and onto the roof. The hatch that protected the gunner from the chest down was spattered and soaked with fresh blood. When a Vara had overrun and ripped him out of the hatch, it hadn’t been gentle.

  Without thinking about it, Aaro slipped into the hole and pulled the gun to attention. It was being fed by a long belt of ammunition that disappeared into a slot next to the mount. The barrel was still warm and the blood around him still wet. He grimaced and wheeled the sights around to face the horde. With a single breath, he tensed his shoulders, steadied the weapon and pulled the trigger. There really was no time to waste and they were already within charging distance.

  Locked in place on its mount, the gun didn’t kick back, but like a firehose from the pressure, it rocketed upwards, sending a stream of bullets into the gathering clouds. The weapon roared, deafening him. After a couple of seconds, the individual clacks of the rounds disappeared inside his head. The clink of the empty shells as they rattled off the roof of the jeep, the incessant chatter of the barrel, and the deep, bone shuddering rumble of the mechanisms inside the gun all faded away into a roll of constant thunder. Between the muzzle flashes, like a high-speed strobe light, Aaro could make out the Varas still approaching, dancing back and forth, mouths agape and hissing. He kept his finger firmly down and roved side to side, letting loose with a torrent of rounds, a constant river of white-hot lead that swung from left to right in a deadly blade.

  Howls and yowls echoed through to him as he hit at least one of them, the dull thwap of bullets in flesh punctuating the thunderous call. It was impossible to tell whether he’d killed some, or none, or all, but he wasn’t going to release that trigger and risk finding out if it was either of the former. He was going to keep firing until the hammer fell uselessly on an empty chamber, and not a second before.

  His hands were numb and his chest was hurting from the vibration already. His teeth chattered and his eyes wobbled in his skull. But he kept firing. Shapes moved beyond his field of vision, beyond the dragon breath. Beyond the fire breathing weapon that he was clinging for dear life. He realised he was yelling, nearly blind from the force.

  But then, even in his disoriented state behind the weapon, things became apparent. A growl from his right and dark flash in his vision made him wheel around. He twisted the gun, firing point blank into a shapeless black mass as a Vara reared up next to him, right on the jeep. They must have raced forward between the cars as the bullets whizzed overhead, and now, they were there. Aaro swung the weapon and let loose into the bulk of one of the beasts. It squealed and convulsed as it was pummeled backwards, bouncing off the side of a nearby car before falling motionless at its side.

  Aaro looked front now and saw the onslaught, at least two dozen, still coming, and far too close for comfort. He straightened the barrel and kept firing. They scattered and weaved. He wrenched the weapon up and down and in circles but he couldn’t hit them all. Couldn’t keep them all back. They came forward like a wave and then from nowhere, one was on the bonnet of the jeep. It leapt up from the bumper and was within arms reach, and by the time Aaro rammed the muzzle in its face, it was all but on him. The force of the bullets blasted it backwards and the monster twisted and rolled limply over the railing, plunging down towards the river below. His own experience with that tumble seemed like an age ago now, but in reality was really only an hour, if that. He swallowed and got his mind back on task. It seemed futile. They were surrounding him now, leaping at the jeep, every one getting closer to him each time. He was fending them off as best he could but the belt of ammunition would run out sooner or later, and then he’d be swallowed under a mountain of teeth and claws. He took out two more and glanced over his shoulder. He w
as done for. One would circle around and catch him before he could turn the gun, and that would be it. It was a heroic idea, but it was unrealistic in all senses of the word. A last-ditch attempt that was about to be over.

  Frantically, he searched for an out. It was useless, he was trapped like a rat, cornered in the open. He swore through gritted teeth, pulling harder on the trigger. Bodies started to tumble and mount up around him but every second he spent there, half-exposed, was another one that felt borrowed.

  And then the belt ran dry.

  As quickly as the barrage had started, the gun suddenly clicked uselessly, and without warning. He hadn’t noticed it nearing the end and it took a second to sink in, for his mind to reboot. A hiss erupted from behind him and he spun quickly, folding his legs and dropping down into the cab of the jeep as he did, barely avoiding the Vara screaming over the roof towards him. On the bloodsoaked metal, it slid over his head, scrabbling for purchase with its hooked talons on the flush steel plating. The circle of sunlight visible through the hatch above blinked for a second as a huge body moved across it, and then it disappeared altogether as Aaro snapped the hole shut, shoving the sliding hatch across with a clang.

  He lay on his back, panting, hands aching and tingling from the gun. The sounds of the monsters outside were dull through the metal hull, but no less distinctive or terrifying. He caught his breath and rolled over, trying to avoid looking through the windshield of the jeep and into the eyes of the beasts misting the windows with their breath as they tried to dig their way in through the glass. Luckily it was plated and probably bulletproof, so they wouldn’t be getting through any time soon.

  Aaro climbed into the driver’s seat and checked the ignition. No keys. He swore. It wasn’t like he could have driven anywhere anyway, the bridge was packed with abandoned cars.

  He looked under the seat and in the sun visor anyway, but they weren’t there. He checked the glove box on the off chance and found nothing but a map and a pistol. He looked at the gun and pulled it out, releasing the clip as he did. It was alien to him, he’d only ever fired a pellet gun before, and that was as a teenager, but he’d seen so many television shows and movies and on autopilot, did what he knew was right. He took the magazine out and checked it. It was full. Seventeen rounds he counted. He slammed it back into the butt of the pistol and cocked it. A bullet slid into the chamber with a satisfying click and the lethality of the weapon struck home. He laid it carefully on the dashboard and looked at the map. As he did the vehicle rocked violently. He steadied himself on the wheel and looked across the passenger seat. The Varas still milled around outside, leaning and clawing on the outside of the jeep. Two had leapt on it at the same time and the springs wallowed under the weight. Aaro shook it off and looked left, out of the driver’s window. The rail was tight against the door and beyond was nothing but space. The height made his stomach lurch and he returned to the map, but then, the jeep rocked heavily again and sank into the wheels. More were on top now, and piling on. Aaro tried to put it out of his mind, willing his engineer brain to trust the strength of the materials as he traced the route ahead to the refugee camp which was circled in red and labelled. Once more, the car wallowed and this time smacked into the rail with a dull gong-like clang. Aaro swore loudly and shot the Vara staring into the passenger window a mean look, cursing further. It bared its teeth and growled at him. Aaro flipped him off in return. The mass of Varas outside was thick. At least twenty of them. God. Did he even hit a single one?