The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  “The virus doesn’t work that way,” Brosk said. “It hides in the immune system.”

  “It used to.” Sally2 smiled briefly, a flash of teeth that made Sally23 shiver. The woman’s an ice queen. “We’ve modified the virus,” Sally2 explained. “There are now over forty-seven different varieties floating around. Some are self-mutating. Some we’ve altered here in the lab. Each new permutation attacks the body in a different way. All are fatal. Some just work more quickly than others.”

  “People have survived it though,” Brosk said. “When it was first released in Rochester—”

  Sally2 laughed harshly. “The first few versions were experimental—less potent. Some of the viruses we’re putting out now are slow acting, but nobody completely recovers from them. And immunity to one version is not immunity to all. Eventually, one permutation or another will target every human and the entire race will disappear.”

  “So your Gaia movement is really humanicide?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “There’ve been many fanatics throughout the centuries,” Brosk said, “with many different methods of killing. But I’ve never heard of one that wanted to wipe out the planet.”

  “No,” Sally2 said. “Not the planet. That’s where you’re wrong. It’s only humanity we wish to destroy.”

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” Brosk said.

  “It’s imprecise,” Sally2 said.

  “Don’t you feel superior?” Brosk asked, his voice now hard, accusing. “Don’t you seek an Eden where you can live in the bliss of perfect ignorance?”

  Sally2 backed up a step.

  “No one,” Brosk continued, “ever gives up power completely, voluntarily.”

  “Until now,” Sally2 said.

  “And do all your followers, all Earth Guardians, share your viewpoint?”

  Sally2 said, “The trusted do. And the Earth Guardians are fools, thinking they can alter the future with words.”

  Brosk looked directly at Sally23, his mouth curled in an ironic smile, as if he could read her thoughts, her doubts. A warmth spread through the center of her body. How could she want him so badly when she had Reg? On the other hand, Reg was so unremarkable, so safe. And she didn’t love Reg even if she liked him. She broke eye contact.

  “You think you can kill every human on the planet?”

  “Our advances with the virus are so great that the annihilation of everyone will occur soon.”

  A brief tic developed at the corner of Brosk’s mouth.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Sally2 said. “We’re aware that two men have so far shown immunity to the virus. Two transgenic men. Pseudos. They call themselves Escala. They’re unnatural freaks. So you hope that a cure may yet be found. And the great Walt Devereaux is working on it. But he will fail. The new versions of the virus are much deadlier than the old. Nothing will stop them. By the end of the month, Indonesia’s population will be annihilated. By the end of next year, humanity will cease to be.”

  Sally23 shivered again. Was that excitement or fear?

  “Why Indonesia?” Brosk asked.

  “Because it’s the most difficult area to infect,” Sally2 answered. “All those islands. We want to prove that we can deliver our purification to the farthest reaches of the globe. After our work is done,” Sally2 continued, in a more talkative mood than Sally23 had ever seen her, “the planet will become a vast wasteland to humans. Not even those pseudo freaks on Mars will be able to survive here.”

  “How will you know you’ve succeeded?” Brosk asked. “If you’re dead too, how can you be sure? Unless you’re planning to stay alive.” Brosk looked steadily at Sally23 now, understanding in his wonderfully expressive eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t really want to die. When it comes down to the end, you’ll claw and scratch and fight for life, just like the rest of us.”

  Sally23 flushed as Brosk began to shudder, then groan. The four Wallys—techs who helped Sally2 build her versions of the virus—stopped what they were doing and observed him. Sally23 told herself she had no reason to feel guilty; she was committed to the movement. Yet Brosk wasn’t evil. Somehow she knew that. I’d bet my life on that—worthless as it may be.

  “Or perhaps,” Brosk continued once he recovered his breath, “you’ve turned off the death genes in your bodies so you can live for hundreds of years.”

  “There is no antidote,” Sally2 said. As Brosk’s body spasmed, Sally2 reached out a hand briefly before pulling it back. Was that real, or was a she playing game with the Sallies, trying to get them to care about him? “And we’re already all infected. But some strains of the virus are more painful than others. The virus infecting the trusted, for example, will simply cause us to fall asleep, drifting gently into eternal slumber.”

  Sally23 recognized the phrasing from when she’d been asked to join the trusted. It was exactly the kind of manipulation Sally2 delighted in. Did the other Sallies notice the cliché? Did they have doubts too? Was that why they were here, to witness Brosk’s painful death as some sort of warning?

  “The virus I gave you,” Sally2 continued, “is agonizing—a result of its relatively fast-acting nature.”

  Brosk began to twitch, his jaw muscles working angrily as short grunts emerged from his throat.

  “What a shame,” Sally8 said. “Such a lovely man.”

  Sally17 giggled again. “He’ll make a lovely corpse.”

  Sally23 shook her head as Brosk stared at her. Why had he fixated on her? His arms and legs fought the restraints, and his head moved from side to side. His grunts grew louder, until he began screaming. Sally23 jumped to her feet. She’d never heard a man scream before. It took her a moment to realize what she’d done. She stopped herself from walking over to him, forced herself to take her seat again, to put a neutral expression on her face. Is that my heart breaking? Will I fight for life the way Brosk is? She wanted to tell Sally2 to stop torturing the poor man. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for. Humanity has to go, yes—but not by the most painful means possible.

  Sally2 had been watching her. Now she turned to Brosk, her lips trembling ever so slightly.

  Finally Brosk’s head dropped to his chest. Sally2 gestured to the techs, who removed Brosk from the chair and carried him from the room.

  Sally2 turned to her. “You have a problem with what I did?”

  “Frankly, yes. You said you were going to use him as a tool. How do you plan to do that if he’s dead?”

  “You have feelings for him.”

  “Why does he need to be tortured?”

  “Brosk isn’t dead,” Sally2 replied with a smile. “We’re breaking him down, reconditioning him, programming him for one final mission. We’ll bring him to the brink of death a few more times before we begin to rebuild him.”

  “And those electrodes?” Sally8 asked. “For modifying his behavior?”

  Sally2 nodded. “We’re going to re-wire his brain. He’ll be difficult to crack. He’s been so thoroughly programmed by CINTEP that the process may turn him into little more than a simpleton. But we only need him to perform one simple task. And one of you will accompany him to ensure that he succeeds. Still, that’s a project for another day. Meanwhile,” she pointed to the table by the side of the door, “we have deliveries to make, people to kill.”

  Sally23 followed Sally8 and Sally17 to the table and looked at the shopping bags from local stores that now held containers of the virus. She said, “What about those two men who are immune? What if there are others? What if Devereaux finds a cure in time?”

  Sally2’s eyes narrowed, boring into Sally23’s. “You’re troubled by much of what we do. Can we still trust you?”

  “I don’t know. Can you act honorably?”

  Immediately Sally23 regretted her outburst. Sally2 could have her killed with a word, either to Andre or one of the Wallys
.

  But Sally2 just smiled. “I took you off communications because you question too much. That’s also why I no longer allow you to assist me with my experiments.”

  Sally23 swallowed. “I’m not afraid of you. If you want to kill me, kill me.”

  Sally2 glared at her as Sally8 and Sally17 backed away. Then Sally2 laughed, though her cheeks reddened. She looked at Sally8 and Sally17. “Eight and Seventeen, grab your bags and go. Twenty-three, you’ll remain behind to help turn Brosk. You’ll accompany him on his mission. Glory to Gaia.”

  “Glory to Gaia,” Sally8 and Sally17 responded as they hurried out the door.

  Sally23 stood before Sally2, her stomach fluttering. She wanted Brosk; she wanted an exciting, extraordinary man. Even though Sally2 was manipulating her into creating a bond with him, she didn’t care. She desired Brosk—partly for his looks, yes, but also because he represented what humanity might have become had it turned away from selfishness. Sally2, on the other hand, confirmed the evil inherent in the species. Sally23 saw that clearly. Despite her agreement that humans had to vanish, she despised the arrogance of Sally2.

  So she’d play the game that Sally2 ordered her to play. The end result wasn’t in question anyway. She’d already surrendered her life and she accepted that. She didn’t really regret giving it away. But now she wanted to see Sally2 die before she went.

  Chapter 2

  Aspen wiped the environmental sensors and flicked the dust cloth, releasing fine red particles that drifted down Dunadan’s knoll toward the airlock to Tunnel Two. Moving on to the communications array, she glanced back at the sealed-off tunnel entrance to the New Dawn Martian settlement, then over to the pods where the idiots from the MineStar colony resided: a few kilometers away. A rotating crew of around fifty worked on Mars at any given time. Their current number was forty-eight. And their health was fragile.

  Aspen still didn’t understand why the Escala had elected to settle nearby; she would have chosen the other side of the planet. The miners annoyed her. Supposedly self-sufficient—a ship came to offload ore and deliver a new crew every twenty-six months—they constantly intruded on the Escala for assistance: food, medicine, equipment and companionship. She wondered if it would bother her as much if the miners hadn’t created a trash dump a kilometer away, always in sight when she was outdoors.

  Beneath her feet, the vibration of the miners’ big tunneling machines suddenly stopped. They’d agreed to cease digging during the experiment, so it must be starting soon. Aspen gazed up at the three inactive volcanoes that made up the Tharsis Montes. Then she stared out into space, across the darkness that separated her from Zora, toward the small white light of Earth.

  Home.

  Aspen remembered almost nothing about her early childhood. She recalled her parents only vaguely. But one clear memory stood out: the dock out in front of their home, and the vast lake that stretched for kilometers. The image of clear blue water and sky, interrupted only by the green pines on the far shore, left her feeling hollow as she surveyed the endless reddish sand beneath her feet.

  She activated her powerscope until Earth appeared as a blue marble, streaked with white. It still looked impossibly small; her powerscope’s settings only went so high. Above the Earth the Moon circled slowly. Aspen wished she were back there, on the Moon, with Zora and Rendela. But Rendela was dead, the lunar colony was in the process of rebuilding, and Zora, after sending Aspen and five other cadets to Mars with the Escala, and after promising to keep in touch, had virtually shut down.

  On the rare occasion that Zora returned a message, she provided scant information and almost nothing of a personal nature, as if she wanted nothing to do with Aspen anymore. No doubt part of it was the constant pain she was in: the cost of the transfusion that had saved her life. The blood she received had been infected with the Susquehanna Virus and resulted in severe and incurable arthritis. Aspen wondered if that was the only reason Zora had withdrawn. Had Zora forgotten their days together in the Tong? Had she forgotten that she was supposed to be the cadets’ leader? How badly damaged was she?

  “Aspen?” Addam’s voice came over her suit’s comm unit. “You mind if I join you?”

  Aspen sighed and told him to come on up. She knew what he wanted, what all the boys wanted. In the last few months she and her fellow cadets had become sexually active. On the Moon as eleven-year-olds, they had been given hormones and nanobots and had their DNA altered until their bodies became fully developed adult bodies, but their sex drives had been suppressed and altered to bring out fits of rage so they would comply with their programming and destroy select governments on Earth. Now they functioned, according to Dr. Wellon, in the normal range for twenty-year-olds. Did all twenty-year-old boys want sex as much as Addam did? To be honest, Aspen found it less than thrilling. Maybe if she loved Addam, she would enjoy it more; but the person she really loved had abandoned her, and Aspen had too many things on her mind to be able to simply relax and enjoy sex.

  Recently she and Addam had become a more-or-less monogamous couple, as had Shiloh and Phan, Kammilee and Benn. Occasionally one of them would sleep with one of the massive Escala teenagers but those instances were becoming rarer. The Escala were happy on Mars; this was the planet they were built for, while Aspen and her fellow cadets had been created for . . . what—Earth? The Moon? Or had they simply been designed to die? At any rate, she wished for the home she barely remembered, though her fellow cadets didn’t seem all that depressed by their exile.

  “Hey,” Addam said as he nudged the shoulder of her Mars suit, “you worried about Guffie?”

  “They don’t care about him,” Aspen said. “He’s just a rat to them.”

  “They’re scientists,” Addam said. “They remind me of all the doctors who used to prod and poke us on the Moon. Remember Hack‘emup?”

  “Dr. Hackett,” Aspen said with a nod. “I think I hated him the most. He made every visit painful.”

  “Well, he can’t bother you anymore,” Addam said as he rubbed the back of Aspen’s suit, confirming her guess as to his intentions.

  Aspen shut off the powerscope. “You think Guffie might survive?”

  “I don’t know,” Addam replied. “Quekri says there’s a good chance the experiment will work.”

  “She doesn’t know, though. It’s never been done before. And Guffie, poor little Guffie . . .”

  “He’ll probably be fine. And if he doesn’t make it, there are other animals up here, other rats.”

  “You don’t understand either,” Aspen said.

  “He’s just a rat,” Addam said. “He’s a nice rat but he’s still just a rat. I think the only reason you like him so much is because you want to have babies.”

  “You’re a stupid boy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Addam said. He touched his helmet to hers, pinching his eyebrows together and pursing his lips in a plea. “Please don’t be mad.”

  Aspen pulled away from him. “Why are you out here?”

  “Quekri thought you’d want to be there when they start the experiment.”

  “I’ll be there shortly.”

  “By the way,” Addam said, “did you know Kammilee wants to get pregnant?”

  Aspen nodded. “She told me. I think it’s stupid. She only wants it because three Escala women managed to get pregnant.”

  “I still don’t understand how that happened. I thought they were sterile.”

  “On Earth they were—even on the Moon. But their bodies continue to evolve. Dr. Wellon says all the Escala women will be able to get pregnant within the year. If you want, they might even let you father a child.”

  “I wouldn’t mind sleeping with Zeriphi.”

  “She’s already pregnant,” Aspen said.

  “Too bad. I’ll do the visual scan on the ship if you want. Have you done it yet?”

  Aspen handed him the powerscope and
he put it up to his helmet, staring off toward Earth. Aspen looked at the distant planet again, now just a bright light, little different from all the others in the darkness. It wasn’t even as large or luminous as Deimos, the smaller of Mars’ two moons. Phobos, the bigger moon, had already set, due to rise again in seven hours.

  “The ship’s changed direction,” Addam said. He sent the coordinates to the control center while Aspen finished cleaning the communications array. “It’s no longer navigating off our comm-link. Maybe it’s not really coming here.”

  Aspen shrugged. “Quekri said the trajectory is perfect and it’ll be here in about a month. But the Chinese aren’t saying anything.” She glanced toward Earth again, but couldn’t see the ship. “If it’s just changed direction, then nobody really knows.”

  Addam lowered the powerscope and looked at her. “You think Curtik and Zora are okay? Curtik sounds all right when he answers my queries.”

  “Zora’s in a lot of pain. She won’t take the drugs they’ve offered.”

  “Why not? Curtik says they work great.”

  “I think it’s because she’s in love with Jeremiah Jones.”

  “That old guy? What’s he got to do with it?”

  Aspen shrugged. “He’s in pain, so she wants to be in pain too.”

  “That’s weird.”

  Aspen sighed. “I sort of understand. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ll never see home again.”

  As they walked back to the Tunnel Two entrance, Addam said, “Zora might visit us.”

  “And leave her precious Jeremiah behind? I don’t think so.”

  “Well,” Addam said. “We should forget about Zora and Jeremiah Jones and Earth and the Susquehanna Virus and all that crap. We’re on Mars now. We’re part of the future of humanity. We’re with the Escala.”

  As they reached the New Dawn airlock, Aspen gazed about her at the desolate landscape, no less barren than the Moon, except for the MineStar colony and the garbage dump. She said, “This place will never be home.”