Authors: Craig Saunders
She
dragged him through his open front door.
Outside,
the world had turned to hell.
She
strode toward a black scratched and dented Mercedes. He watched the set of her
shoulders, her long legs, the work boots she wore. She yanked the passenger door
open and flicked her head.
The
gun was still in her hand.
Edgar
got in. She slammed the door behind him. Another gunshot, somewhere closer.
The
woman slid into the driver's seat and jammed the gun down into the side pocket
of the door. She turned the key she'd left in the ignition, reversed and hit
someone that bounced back into the road.
Edgar
turned to look, afraid she'd kill him too.
Why
do I care?
he thought again. It was a refrain he already disliked.
The
man she'd hit lay across the verge. She'd knocked him from the pavement to the
brown grass. The man was naked.
'You
killed him...'
Why
do I care? I want to die...
'I
bloody well hope so,' she said. 'Time's short, Edgar, so I'm not going to fuck
around with you. The town, around ten miles out, too...it's quarantined.
There's an experiment going on. They put something in the water. It's making
everyone crazy, and I don't think it's turning out like they hoped.'
'They?
What? Like...Sarah?'
The
woman shook her head. She didn't look at Edgar but at the road, the houses,
then, the buildings around them as they drove through town. She drove fast,
almost recklessly, but she was confident enough.
Looking
for someone else to run down, or shoot. Maybe both.
'Not
like your wife. Your wife...' The woman sighed and swerved round corners like
she didn't expect to meet a car coming the other way.
'The
way I understand it, it's like a temporary, very rare side effect. It's not
permanent. The dead aren't coming back to life, Edgar. That's not what's
happening. People are killing each other. That's the problem.'
'A
side effect...' said Edgar. 'Of...?'
'You
think I'm a nut? That's fine. You go on believing your wife just wanted a
cuddle and it's normal for a town like this to be empty. Edgar, wake up.'
Edgar
fell silent for a moment. She was right. She drove like a maniac, unmindful of
the chance of other traffic but not because she was reckless - because there
were no other cars. None at all.
He
noted small things on the street. Bins, overflowing and forgotten. A postman's
trolley with three beer cans on top, like the postman left it out all night and
youngsters from the off-license had used it for a table.
Something
wet dripped from the bottom of the trolley.
As
they neared town, he remembered walking, head down, past the market. But now,
through the market square empty of people, he realised he wasn't even sure what
day it was. He wasn't thinking straight. He was...confused. It couldn't have
been market day when he walked back. There weren't any people. That didn't make
sense at all.
That's
right. No sense at all...because I'm confused. Stress...my wife...
But
the burn on his face was
real
. The ringing, whistling sound in his ear
on that side. The dimming of sounds all around him. Did he imagine the whole
thing...if he did, who the hell hallucinates pain, too?
And
who is this woman? Why me?
'Who
are you?' Another thought hit him. 'How do you know who I am? What are you?
Some kind of Special Forces, soldier-type?'
'No,'
she said, then laughed. The sound seemed to surprise her, even from her mouth
as it was. 'My name's Francis. I'm not a soldier. I used to listen to Luther Vandross
in my bedroom,' she said, and laughed again. Her laugh sounded to Edgar much
like the feelings that ran in him.
She's
afraid, too.
She
glanced at him, but remained sure on the road. 'I'm not
special
.'
'Why
did you come for me? Where did you get a
gun
? I don't understand.'
She
didn't answer that, but waved her hand at the town as they sped through the
high street. 'Look around, Edgar. Tell me what you see?'
He
did, again, waking and seeing, cataloguing.
Bright
sunshine. Fruit and crates and baskets and punnets and wooden pallets, tumbled
to the ground. A fishmonger's van, crawling with black flies...and over
everything, even in the car was the stench he'd barely registered, head down,
walking through town on the way to his wife.
No
people at all. But now his eyes were truly open, he understood that wasn't
true.
There
was someone. A man leaned against a shop window and there was a long, dark smear
behind him.
'Is
that...blood?'
'Yep.
Blood. It's like that for ten miles in any direction. And how I know who you
are? A boy told me your name. He sent me to get
you
.'
'Me?'
'Yeah.
Don't know why, but the kid thinks you can help us stop the man who did this
because you're special, too, aren't you, Edgar?'
The
man who saw a burning world,
he thought. No...
'The man with
fire in his eyes,' he said, and knew that this time he was right.
'Yes,'
she said. 'His name is O'Dell.'
*
Something
struck the windscreen at the outskirts of town. The screen shattered. Francis
swerved. Edgar saw everything slow, though in reality everything happened fast.
Blood
on her. She didn't cry out. The thing, grey and heavy, tore into Edgar's arm
and he felt nothing. It was rough, and hard.
My arm's broken,
he
thought, pain on the heels of thought. Not a rock...a piece of concrete. Two
feet long, maybe one foot around. Iron or steel inside the concrete. It flew
through the space between the front seats to the back, where it speared the
material and smashed against the metal inside the boot. His shoulder burned and
he understood that the blood on Francis' face and shirt was all his. She bounced
the car against something. She spoke but he didn't hear her words. The car hit
the kerb and the gun in the side pocket jumped, jounced about, hit her head then
landed in the foot well beneath the brake pedal. She didn't touch the brake but
stamped on the accelerator instead.
Stop,
he tried to say, but he was weak. He put his left hand over his right shoulder.
Blood poured around his fingers. Might as well have been trying to stop a river
with a stick. The car sped. Around forty...he checked her dashboard and saw she
was up to fifty miles per hour. The lights at a junction ahead were red.
Her
face was grim. Red lights didn't matter. There was no one around to hit.
Everyone was dead, or insane...or...
I've
been drinking the water, too, and if what she says is true...
Thoughts
popped into Edgar's head, passed through, left nothing behind. Like the people
he said 'hi' to on his walks into town to buy groceries, or Sarah a birthday
present. The blood through his fingers and along his arm was a torrent. He felt
dizzy, sick.
At
fifty miles an hour Francis leaned the car into a tight bend that led not
south, to the bypass, but north and out into the country.
No
one around.
All fine. Everything's fine.
Edgar's
left side was soaked. His eyes drifted and his vision wavered but he still saw
the white van coming at them.
A
delivery driver who missed the memo,
he mused.
Then
he saw the driver's face. A mask of blood.
At
the last moment before the impact Edgar though the driver had no lips - just
long teeth, red with blood and froth and spit.
At
fifty, on a tight bend, Francis had no chance. The guy wasn't trying to avoid
them, either - he was trying to kill them.
The
Mercedes front end was crushed, the car turning the wrong way up so Francis was
above Edgar, before they rolled. Edgar's head hit the window as the car hit the
ground.
Finally,
the car skewed and slid on the roof. Distantly, Edgar heard the roar of the
engine, or the wheels - something still turning. Francis' head rested on his
shoulder. Shattered glass covered them both. The smell of hot rubber, along
with petrol, exhaust dirt, a tang like the gun smoke he'd smelled earlier from
split airbags. Hot tarmac by his burned cheek.
There
should be a window there.
The
thought was muzzy. Everything was fading away. His hearing took longer to go. He
heard footsteps, the woman's breath, the slow tumble of sharp things falling
through the wreckage of the car, and a voice.
'Kshh.
Kssahh.'
The
words made no sense, but as Edgar wondered at the meaning, he slipped all the
way into unconsciousness, along with Francis beside him.
*
VII.
U+03BF
Darren
Sewell Jones clicked his ballpoint pen repetitively - nib in, nib out - while he
stared at the computer monitor in front of him, hardly seeing the website he'd
been designing.
The
computer was a high-end Mac. A crisp screen, great graphics. The colours were
vibrant and everything seemed to shine like crystal. All around his desk,
post-it notes were stuck down with benign messages upon them. Some bore smiley
faces above the 'i', some little winking faces, like people thought in
emoticons instead of English now. He hated it. The walls to his cubicle were
some kind of fuzzy felt thing. He could have stuck a picture of a farm on it,
or Mr. Men, or Sesame Street characters. As long as they were made of felt, too,
because nothing else would stick there. The wood of his desk was laminated, or
covered in some kind of lacquer. He didn't know shit about wood, except this
'wood' got slick with sweat from his wrist as it rubbed on his desk just beneath
his mouse mat.
The
post-it messages, bland and cancerous at the same time, peeked back at him
every time he looked at them. There was one in particular that troubled him. He
hid this beneath his ergonomic keyboard, which he lifted on occasion to remind
himself exactly what was written there, like he did now.
Mick
Ranse is trying to fuck your daughter in the ring. Dirty fucker is a snatch
rapist. Watch him.
The
note was signed, simply,
'A FRIEND'.
Jones' daughter
was five.
Jones
looked up over the parapet of his cubicle and saw Ranse emerge from the door
that led to the small kitchen and the toilets.
It
was the smile the man wore that sealed the deal.
Snatch
rapist.
Jones
had a picture of his daughter and his wife on his desk.
'Ranse,'
he called.
Ranse
didn't look like Jones imagined a paedophile should. The man looked like a
tired drunk. His tie wasn't straight after the toilet. Everyone knew Ranse put
a shot in his coffee after lunch. Maybe he'd been sick, puking in the toilet
and writing it off to a weak constitution. He was an alcoholic and people
pitied him.
They
didn't know what Jones' knew, though, thanks to his friend.
'What's
up, brother?'
Ranse,
talking to Jones like they were friends or something. They weren't.
'Here.
Got Daze a new shirt. What do you think?'
Daze,
his pet name for Daisy. His daughter. Five years old.
'Damn,'
said Ranse. 'You're going to have your hands full. Great shirt.'
Fucker's
getting off on the picture.
Jones
almost checked Ranse's trousers for a shift. But he didn't.
'Here,'
he said, standing and freeing his chair so that Ranse could sit. 'Anyway,
wanted you to look at this. New design I've been working on. I could do with an
opinion. Can't see the wood for the trees, been at it so long, you know?'
'Sure,
bud,' said Ranse. Jones stood, Ranse sat. Jones took the phone from the cradle.
Everything was wireless these days. The computers, the printers. Everything except
the phones. It had a curly wire which Jones put round Ranse's throat.
Jones
pulled it tight as his strength would allow. Ranse gurgled, but the cable
shifted and he almost got loose.
Jones'
used his body to ram Ranse into the desk, thumping his face hard enough into
the keyboard to crack the black plastic. The monitor wobbled on its stand, but
didn't fall. Ranse fought, but didn't say anything because he couldn't. Jones panted
from the effort of strangling the nonce bastard.
Ranse's
feet kicked out beneath the cubicle. There was a smell of piss, not just
Ranse's, but Jones, too. He felt the warmth on his leg. He felt sordid,
embarrassed about that - an adult, pissing himself at work - but he was just fine
with killing.
Finally,
Ranse stilled.
No
one watched. There wasn't anyone else in the office.
Good,
thought Jones.
That's good. Because I just killed a man.
Everyone's
going to know I did it, but it's fine because the man was trying to fuck my five
year old daughter. Public service. Protecting my family.
It's
fine.
'It's
fine,' he said, and smoothed his jacket as he walked to the office door. It
would lead to fresh air, a shingle-covered car park, his Audi. Home, a family
that he'd just looked after like a man should.
Jones
opened the door and stepped into a dark room instead of a car park.
'What
the...'
He
didn't finish his sentence.
A
bullet entered the right side of his head, exited through the left, tearing and
fragmenting and ruining anything that might have remained of Mr. Jones' awful
insanity. He fell onto a plastic sheet. A man in a hazardous materials suit
stepped up and folded the sheet over Jones' body, there in the dark, and
dragged him away. That man was followed by another with a full body suit and
respirator, who switched off the cameras which covered the work simulation and
then set to cleansing the room, but only after he'd tidied away the other body.
*
Kurt
William O'Dell had no memory, but he didn't live for the past. He was all about
the future - the one he could see, and the one he was making. He wasn't a
chemist, though, or a scientist, or a soldier. That was why he made sure owned
the men and women who were, and the ones he owned were very, very good at what
they did.
He
watched the video from the simulation until Jones exited the room. The footage showed
different angles, each angle displayed on a bank of screens. When the show was
finally over, O'Dell looked over the readouts from various sensors on a smaller
monitor beneath the screens.
'What
am I looking at?' he asked.
'The
test you just viewed was the last test phase of the second iteration of the
compound. Sir, we are officially ready to rock and roll.'
'But
not, Mr. Boyle, the only reason I am here?
'No,
Sir,' replied Boyle, shifting from foot to foot like a restless child. Already,
the motion grated on O'Dell's nerves. If Boyle wasn't so brilliant, he would
have happily put a bullet in the man's spine, if only to make him still.
'The
rarest effects, Sir,' continued Boyle, blithely unaware that only O'Dell's will
was holding back a bullet, 'Such as increased cognitive ability, or even the
rather mild regenerative capabilities some subjects exhibit, have proven
impossible to replicate reliably. Far too many variables, perhaps genetic,
synaptic variations, mutations, even. But telepathic awakening, telekinesis,
precognition, hyperawareness, increased perception...these things aren't just
rare, Sir. They just
don't
happen. In one thousand plus test subjects,
one showed a moderate increase in mental capacity, but coupled with a case of
the crazies. Ah...Sir.'
'Boyle...please
stop blathering. I take it these...side-effects...have become so rare as to be
dismissed. That they are irrelevant, then?'
'Yes,
Sir. Reanimation of any kind hasn't been replicated under controlled conditions
at all, on living or dead subjects, not any of their samples. The only examples
we have are from field footage.'
'Your
conclusions?'
'The
modified compound - we're calling it U+03BF - is damn near perfect at what it
does. Other effects may be random, even so, but in affecting the
actions
of
those exposed? Brilliant, Sir. The team has done a Stirling job.'
'U+O3BF,
Boyle?'
'It's
an organophosphorus compound, Sir. We have taken the original formula, based
more heavily on a composition similar to LSD, but Novichok agent...'
'Boyle?'
'Sir?'
'U+03BF?'
Boyle
smiled. 'Are you familiar with unicode, Mr. O'Dell?'
'Facets,
certainly. This is unicode?'
'It
is. It represents the Greek lower case letter, 'omicron'...Sir...I...'
Boyle
wilted in O'Dell's glare.
'One
of the team is a great fan of Futurama...'
'Mr.
Boyle, you are aware I carry an automatic pistol.'
Boyle
looked down.
'Should
your team decide to saddle me with a name like U+03BF, which I will have to use
in future conversations with my superior, are you in any doubt as to how this
will make me feel?'
'Irritable?'
'Close
enough, Boyle. Tell your team to restrain their cleverness to the task at hand.
The same might well be applied to you.'
'Sir,'
said Boyle, considerably less cheerful than he had been.
'Now,
to the point - reliable effects?'
'From
massive psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia. The mechanism is quite...'
'Have
I not been clear? The point, Mr. Boyle.'
'Short
term? Drop this on the enemy and they're fucked. Long term...well...it's
basically an atomic bomb without the fallout. Sir.'
'That's
your considered scientific opinion, is it?'
'Yes,'
he said. Boyle wasn't scared, now. He was excited. His enthusiasm would have
been contagious, had O'Dell any capacity for such things.
'And
the effects are...uniform? Total?'
'In
scientific terms? The science is mostly boring, I imagine,' said Boyle, quite
rightly, 'But my team has increased efficacy to very near 99.8%.'
'Okay,
Boyle. Perhaps I won't shoot you.'
Boyle
seemed unsure, which was fine by O'Dell. He understood that many people did not
understand when he was joking. He wasn't. Ever. His grin confused people, he
figured.
He
really had decided against shooting Boyle, though. Scientist were plentiful.
Chemists with the flare Boyle exhibited were not.
'Anything
else?' said O'Dell. Impatient as ever, he certainly hoped not. He was ready to
move to the next thing.
Boyle's
moment was far from done, though. O'Dell sighed and waved his hand for the man
to get it over with.
'How
long since you saw her, Sir?'
'The
woman? Farnham?' O'Dell shrugged. Memory was around the only thing that made
him uncomfortable. 'She's still going? Honestly...I expected she would have
fallen to pieces by now.'
This
was a lie, though. It was only now that Boyle brought Eleanor Farnham to his
attention that O'Dell remembered his initial interest in her at all.
How
in the fuck is that I forget these things?
He
didn't know. It made him angry right then, but it wasn't Boyle's fault. By his
side, his left hand began to jitter. He slid that hand into his jacket pocket.
It tended to unnerve people, and he wanted Boyle to continue. He
was
curious.
Boyle
nodded. 'Please,' said Boyle. 'Perhaps it's best seen. I think you'll be
pleasantly surprised.'
Kurt
O'Dell wasn't a man who enjoyed being surprised in the slightest, but no sense
in spoiling it - O'Dell thoroughly expected Boyle to be dead within the year at
the latest anyway.
No
sense in upsetting a dead man.
They
rode an elevator to the holding cells. Boyle was bursting to tell O'Dell his
little secret. O'Dell remained studiously silent. He would much rather, he
found, see this for himself.
A
short walk down one of the many identical corridors within the facility, and he
understood Boyle's excitement completely.
Eleanor
Farnham was quite...marvellous.
O'Dell
was
surprised, and very little surprised a man with such an affinity
with the future.