Mass Extinction Event: The Complete Third Series (Days 46 to 53) (12 page)

"I'm good, thanks," George says. "No special favors for me."

"Fool," she says with a smile.

"I know plenty of very smart people who died young," he replies. "If being a fool keeps me alive, then that's fine by me. I only came here to look for two people, and I don't see them in your little group -"

"Then they're dead," she says calmly. "Believe me, this is the only safe part of the city."

George stares at her, but I can see that he believes her.

The woman turns to me.

"Well?" she asks. "Are you stubborn, like your friend, or are you interested in seeing what I've found? I could use a second opinion, and unfortunately the other people around here aren't really much use. There's no reason to be scared. If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead by now."

I stare at her, convinced that at any moment she's going to change her mind and order our execution.

"It's a computer," she continues, keeping her voice low. "It works, too. I've got it linked up to an old wood-burning generator. Not exactly efficient, but still... Anyway, that's not even the most exciting part. Here's the kicker." She leans toward me, with a look of wonder in her eyes. "I've picked up a very interesting signal from somewhere not too far away."

Elizabeth

"This is going to hurt," Toad says as he squeezes some clear gel from a tube. "It's only a mild disinfectant, and it won't be enough to clean your wound properly, but it'll buy us time."

"Time until what?" I ask, sitting on the forest floor with my bare leg out-stretched.

"Time to think of something else," he replies, before he starts to rub the gel over my wound. He was right: it hurts. In fact, it's agony, and although I try to keep from crying out, eventually I let out a gasp of pain. I can feel the gel slowly being worked deeper into the cut, and although I'm just about managing to stay still, the pain is getting worse and worse. Leaning my head back, I close my eyes and desperately try to keep myself from screaming.

"Done," Toad says suddenly.

Turning to look at him, I see that he's finished. My bare ankle glistens in the midday sunlight, and I can tell that pus has already begun to leak from the wound. I keep telling myself that somehow everything is going to be okay, but the truth is, I can tell that my ankle is only going to get worse. Already, it's almost too painful to walk, and in another few hours' time I'm going to start slowing us down.

I can't ignore the truth.

Maybe Toad
should
leave me. If I'm going to die, he and Rachel should still try to find safety. These thoughts have been in my mind for a few hours now, and slowly I'm edging toward thinking the unthinkable. Having spent my whole life worrying only about myself, I can finally feel a different kind of strength welling up in my soul. I just haven't had the guts to put them into words yet, although I'm running out of time and I need to get this over with before the fever brings more delirium. If my fate is sealed, I can't let anyone else suffer.

"I've been thinking," Toad says after a moment, "and I've come up with a solution -"

"Leave me," I say suddenly, interrupting him.

He stares at me.

I pause, wondering whether I really said those words.

"What/" he asks eventually.

"We both know it's the best thing," I continue, taking a deep breath in an attempt to keep from crying. "My ankle's not going to get better, is it? You can keep putting gel on it, but the infection'll just spread. Even if I keep going today, I'll end up collapsing tomorrow, or the day after that. It's inevitable."

He opens his mouth to reply, but it's clear that he knows I'm right.

"And I can't carry on any other way," I point out. "It's clear. The pain's too bad, I can't walk, you sure as hell can't carry me, and then there's Rachel..." Looking over at her, I watch as she stares back at me. After a moment, I turn to Toad. "I've always been a selfish person," I tell him, "and I've always done whatever I wanted, whatever suited me. And this injury to my leg is something
I
caused. It was my fault I cut myself, and it was my fault I didn't pay attention to it. I'm not cut out to live in the world when it's like this, and..."

I sniff back tears, but deep down I suddenly feel as if I'm finally doing the right thing. It's terrifying, but also strangely fulfilling.

"Take Rachel and get going," I continue. "Right at the end of my life, let me do the right thing. She's got more of a chance than me, and so have you. If leaving me here helps you two, then I want you to do it. I've never, ever done anything selfless, but I can see now that this is the right thing to do, and if Rachel survives, then that's all that matters."

"There's another way," he replies.

I shake my head, but the tears are running freely down my cheeks now.

"We can keep going," he continues. "You can use me for support, and I'll carry Rachel, and we'll try to find another route, one that's more direct. Or we can find shelter for a while and wait while I try to fix your ankle. There are a million ways we can beat this, Elizabeth, and none of them involve you sacrificing yourself."

"But all of your answers involve compromise," I point out, my lower lip trembling as I try to persuade him to see the truth. "We're not friends. Not really. We were thrown together by events, and I appreciate everything you've done for me, but I know that you'll just put yourself and Rachel in danger if you try to save me." I pause, stunned by the words that are coming from my lips right now. I never thought I'd do something so selfless, but the crazy part is that I don't even feel scared. As long as I know that Toad and Rachel will be okay, I know I can face this. "Please," I whisper, hoping and praying that he'll understand.

He shakes his head, but there are tears in his eyes too and I can tell that he knows I'm right.

"Please," I whisper again.

He pauses, and then finally he leans closer and kisses my forehead. After a moment, he looks deep into my eyes, and just when I think he's going to pull away, he leans even closer and our lips touch. It's not much, barely a kiss at all, but it lasts for a few seconds. I keep expecting him to turn and leave, but something seems to be holding him close to me, as if he doesn't want the moment to end.

Finally, he pulls back.

"I'm not leaving you," he says quietly.

"Yeah," I reply, sniffing back tears. "You are, and you're taking Rachel with you. And you're going to find somewhere safe, and she's going to get a chance to grow up. You can tell her about me, and you can make out that I'm some great hero who did a really brave thing, but all that matters is that you two are okay. There's a future out there somewhere, a place for survivors, and I wish I could go with you, but I can't. You've always treated me like I'm some kind of kid, but I'm not. I'm an adult, and I can make my own decisions. This is the best option for all of us."

"We'll talk about it in the morning," he says. "You're tired and delirious -"

"I've never been more sure about anything in my life," I continue. "Let me do this. I'm going to die anyway, so at least let me know that you two are going to be okay."

I wait for him to reply, but I can tell that I've won the argument. He's going to leave, and he's going to take Rachel, and I'm going to die with the comfort of knowing that they have a chance. The truth is, I'm convinced that they can get to safety so long as they're able to keep moving, but with me slowing them down, they've got no chance.

"You should sleep," he says calmly.

"I want you to be gone when I wake up," I tell him.

"Elizabeth -"

"Both of you. If you're still here, I'll refuse to come with you. I probably won't even make it until morning anyway. I can tell I'm burning up, and the pain is getting worse. Just promise me you'll be gone when I wake up."

He pauses.

"Get some sleep," he says finally. "Rest. You're in pain."

"But you'll -"

"Sleep."

"But promise -"

"Sleep. Don't make me tell you again." He reaches down and squeezes my hand. "Everything's going to be okay. I promise. You're right. You can't go on like this. Some decisions just can't be avoided."

I want to make him swear that he'll be gone when I wake up, but somehow I can tell from the look in his eyes that he's accepted the inevitability of this moment. I guess he just doesn't want to say the words, but this is goodbye, and the craziest thing is that I can't help smiling as I think of them carrying on and reaching safety. Maybe I'm delirious from the pain and the infection, but I feel as if all that matters is these two other people. Hell, I didn't even know them until about a month ago, but now they mean everything to me. I wasn't able to save Henry, but I can save Toad and Rachel.

"Thank you," I say eventually.

"Here," he says, grabbing a blanket from the rucksack and putting it over my shoulders. His hands are shaking, and although I want him to just walk away right now, I figure he has to do this his own way.

"Thanks," I reply as I settle down to rest.

"I'll -" he starts to say, but his voice trails off.

I stay awake for a while, listening to the sound of him fiddling with the rucksack. I feel strangely calm, and when I finally close my eyes, I find myself imagining what it'll be like when Toad and Rachel reach safety. I hope that one day he'll be able to tell her about me, and although there's not a chance in hell that she'll remember anything about this part of her life, she might at least realize that after her mother died, there was someone else who took care of her. I know there's a chance that she's sick, or maybe even infected, but right now I feel that she at least has hope. I helped her get this far, and now Toad's going to help her to keep going. She'll be fine.

Eventually, finally, I slip into sleep. I just hope that Henry and the rest of my family are waiting for me.

Thomas

"Most of them don't know about this," Quinn says as she leads us through the door, into the wrecked remains of an old sandwich bar. "I prefer to keep a tight rein on information."

I don't reply, because I don't really know what to say. This woman seems...
off
somehow. For one thing, back on the platform she actually seemed to be pleased with me for running someone over with the truck; for another, she clearly has the loyalty of the people who were gathered in the crowd, but I can't see why that might be. So far, Quinn is coming across as a kind of scatty woman whose thought processes don't entirely make sense. I don't trust her at all.

"We're heading down the rabbit-hole," George whispers, keeping pace with me.

"Should we try to run?" I ask.

"I can hear you!" Quinn says, stopping up ahead and opening a cabinet to reveal a laptop, which she removes and places on a table in front of us. "Please don't whisper to each other. If you want to discuss me, or to talk about the situation in any way, you might as well just do it in the open. I don't bite, I promise."

"We were just trying to figure out how crazy you are," George says, with a hint of derision in his tone. "My vote is that you're about a six on the scale, but you're playing to the crowd and trying desperately to seem more like a ten. People like you aren't exactly rare." He turns to me. "What about you, Thomas? Do you think she's faking it?"

I stare at Quinn, who's too busy plugging the laptop into some kind of large black box.

"Thanks to a very complicated system that I set up," she explains, "I've been able to generate small quantities of electrical power and store them in some redundant batteries. I know, I'm a genius, but this is a time for geniuses, so what else can I do other than step up to the plate? Most people, they're not very smart, but I
am
, and that's why I get to do all the fun things, like this -"

She presses a button on the laptop, and it whirs into action.

"Impressed?" she says, turning to us.

"Mildly," George mutters.

I watch as the laptop boots up. To be honest, I never thought I'd see anything like this again. It's only been about a month and a half since the world went to hell, but the laptop already feels like something from another age, almost as if it's out of place in the new order. Nevertheless, even though I keep expecting it to break down, it eventually completes the boot process.

"There's no internet," Quinn says with a smile. "I'm not
that
smart. Hell, I only really started the damn thing out of nostalgia, the first time at least. But I know a thing or two about computers, so I started rooting around and managed to link a low-frequency transmitter to the system, and that's when I came across something very interesting." Turning to the machine, she opens some kind of dialog box and types in a series of commands.

As she continues to work, I walk over to join her. I don't know a lot about computers either, but I can tell that she's working in a DOS dialog box, and once I'm close enough to see the screen properly, I realize she's using the transmitter to ping a server. I stare at the command lines, and at first I tell myself that I must be misunderstanding what I'm seeing, because it looks a hell of a lot like she's getting some kind of signal back from a remote location.

"Someone's out there," she says, turning to me. "You understand what you're looking at, right? Someone's running a server."

"Who?" I ask.

"I don't know
that
," she replies. "Jesus, if I knew that, I wouldn't have to keep digging, would I? I'm not a mind reader. I've been trying to narrow down the physical location, but so far I haven't had any luck. There are programs I could use, but I don't have them, and I'm not gonna try writing them myself. Still, there's no doubt about it. Someone out there is running a server, and as far as I can tell it's up all the time, which indicates a stable and continuous power source, which indicates..."

I wait for her to continue.

"Well?" she says, raising an eyebrow. "You seem reasonably smart. What does it indicate?"

"Someone's out there," I reply, staring at the screen.

"Someone's out there
and
they've got a system running," she continues. "A proper system, with a proper power source. Much better than this pile of junk I managed to rig together. Given current conditions, that's hardly the work of a moment. It's clear that we're talking about someone who knows what they're doing, someone with resources and intelligence. And then there were the booms."

"The booms?"

"You must have heard the booms. Everyone heard the booms. It was like the whole planet shook. The last one was a few weeks ago, and they've been completely irregular, but they
have
happened."

"I remember," I tell her. "I just figured something was exploding somewhere."

"Oh, you're such an optimist," she replies, patting me on the shoulder. "No, something's going on out there, something big and something... Something that someone's controlling. In all this chaos and dust, someone has managed to either retain or regain control of at least some of the old techniques. The world isn't collapsing into disorder after all. If we can find whoever's running this server, we can make contact with other groups like our own, and then we can think about rebuilding properly. This is the beginning of... something!"

"What if it's just automated?" I ask.

"The power supply can't be automated, not after all this time. It would have cut off. Someone's keeping it running."

I turn to George.

"Don't ask me," he says with a shrug. "You two might as well be talking in goddamn Mandarin for all I understand."

"It's a computer system," I tell him. "Someone's got a server going and it's broadcasting a signal."

"It must be powerful, too," Quinn adds. "It's quite faint, but it's distant too. I don't think it's coming from within the city. It could be fifty, maybe sixty miles away, but that's really just an educated guess. I need to find a way to calculate the direction, 'cause right now it could be based anywhere in that radius, maybe even further."

"Great," he replies, "but why? What's the point?"

"Good question," Quinn continues. "I doubt it's just there for the benefit of people like us. Someone's planning something, maybe they were even planning it before all of this crap started to happen. But don't you see? There's order in the chaos. This one, lone signal is proof that the whole world hasn't fallen apart. Someone's out there. It's like a test. They want to make contact, but only with people who have the ability to find them."

"That's something of a stretch," George points out.

"It's a new world order," she continues, ignoring him. Whatever else I might think about her, I can't deny that she's filled with enthusiasm. "It's the start of something huge and wonderful. The human race could never have continued along its old course. Over-population, diminishing resources... We were headed for a crash, so really this whole thing has been a huge blessing. It almost makes me want to believe in God."

Staring at her, I realize that she might have lost her mind. It's almost as if she's enjoying this, as if she thinks it's some kind of huge game.

"So..." I pause as I try to work out what I'm supposed to say next. "What do we do?" I ask eventually. "There's a signal, but now what?"

"I'm glad you asked," she replies, with a mischievous grin. "I've got a plan. We have to go and find the source of this signal. It's almost like a test, a way for us to prove that we're smart enough. Only the best can survive in this strange new world, and those who are too dumb or too weak are just going to have to..." She pauses, and it's almost as if she's enjoying the situation. "You did such a good thing when you ran that girl over," she continues. "She was worthless, just another piece of human flotsam drifting through life. So we're going to have to continue your good work and thin out the ranks by leaving the detritus behind, and then we're going to march forward and embrace the future of the human species. It makes sense, doesn't it? The whole thing makes perfect, crystal clear sense!"

I look at George.

George looks at me.

"Come on," Quinn continues. "Face the future!"

Staring at her, I realize that she's actually serious. She isn't horrified or shocked by the fact that I ran that girl over; she thinks it's a good thing, and she thinks it means that I'm like her. I want to tell her she's insane, but at the same time I'm worried about making her angry.

"So what do you say?" she continues, holding a hand out toward me as the smile finally leaves her face, replaced by a darker expression that hints at danger. "Are you with me, or are you against me?"