29:16:04:59 (18 page)

“Of course it was,” I said. I had created the Alaco virus after all.

I suddenly thought of how the timer had died outside my jail cell, just a little while back. How those creatures came into the living part of this city.

“Why is the power failing?” I asked.

“Now that is why you’re here. Well, besides the turning too, I believe. The lights suddenly flickered inside the small room, and the screams outside picked up. Vincent stared at the roof, as if trying to look through the concrete walls and focus on the antenna above.

“The problem is when the power goes out the barrier drops. The five thousand effect will no longer protect the city, or me, I suppose,” Vincent sighed. “I think that is why the other installations went dark.”

“The others? Like this one? Where?” I asked.

“South Carolina, Russia, China, and a few other places. I lost communication with them a few months back. It’s been quiet ever since.”

Another memory snapped into place. The five thousand effect was launched two years ago at most of the installations through an aerosol blast that treated the atmosphere. The effect was what caused the barrier, the memory loss, and the darkness that surrounded the city’s center. The antenna above us was the launch platform for the aerosol.

The aerosol itself triggered a certain synapses in the brain when the host turned twenty-six and the dormant virus would mutate.

“Why didn’t you ever lose your memory?” I asked.

“We believe that the virus didn’t react with the five thousand effect in a host that doesn’t mutate after twenty-six.”

I was more than confused.

“Why is the number twenty-six so important?” I asked.

“We honestly never figured it out. We just didn’t have enough time. All we know for sure is that the virus can still kill a person at any age, but the mutation doesn’t occur until twenty six.” Vincent shrugged.

“Why would a virus even, or how…” I stuttered. A virus couldn’t determine age, could it? It must have been some physiological change.

“I don’t know,” Vincent answered.

“Well, the power…” I started.

“Right. But I haven’t a clue where the source lies. There are no cords or electronics showing a location. In fact, the power flows through the ground. That’s why the building’s still lit up outside,” Vincent explained.

The chain finally snapped and everything came flooding back.

“The serum! The serum I injected into myself before the five thousand effect was enacted. That’s why I remembered more,” I said out loud, not knowing what to do with all the memories that were suddenly available.

“Exactly lad. The serum didn’t fully block the effect, but it partly worked. Are you back now?” Vincent asked.

“Yes.” Everything from this past life flooded back. All the bad stuff was now lingering in the back of my mind.

“Here, I won’t need this,” I said as I gave the sphere to Vincent. “The five thousand effect surrounds the installation.”

I got up and paced to the middle of the floor. Finding a groove in the tile, I lifted the slab and pressed the revealed button. A small rumble shook beneath our feet, and a trapdoor lifted a few feet away.

“What are you planning on doing?” Vincent exclaimed.

“First and foremost, I need a weapon. If people were still in the installation they may have turned, and they may have adapted to the five thousand effect since they had nowhere to go.”

Vincent walked to a shelf and grabbed a pair of handguns and five clips, along with a flashlight. I wished I had those kinds of reserves just laying around back in the city.

“The installation is down there. The power supply is down there as well. We need to fix that right now, because if we don’t then the barrier falls,” I explained.

“But, you didn’t build the power supply,” Vincent replied.

“I’m no engineer, but we have to do something.” I took just one handgun and a couple of clips. Shoving one clip in, I cocked back the arm and put one in the chamber, making sure the safety was on. I put the gun in my belt, the clips in my front pockets, and twisted down toward the ladder that led underground.

“Be safe down there, Jackson,” Vincent advised.

“Be back in a few,” I said. I stepped onto the ladder and paused for a moment, looking up at Vincent. “You know, I can feel the turning coming. How did you know you were immune to it?”

“I didn’t. Lucky I guess.”

“Luck.” I said. “Don’t think I’ll be so lucky.” I knew I wasn’t going to be immune. Fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to have the person responsible for the fall of humanity be immune to his own plague. “I should be going.”

Chapter 24: Into the Core

It was strange feeling. I remembered everything, as if nothing had changed. It was like reliving a life that hadn’t existed for two years, though I didn’t know if I really wanted the memories back. It was so much easier not knowing, to not remember what I did, or didn’t do. The thought of killing countless people shook me to the core.

These installations were built years before we’d arrived to transform them into delivery systems for the aerosol spray of the five thousand effect. The facility was built deep in the ground, and was comprised of several corridors and labs.

I reached the bottom and turned to see only one corridor leading in the opposite direction. It would eventually split off and deviate from there. Electricity would be running, emitting from the power source, but I would still use the flashlight. Everything was made of concrete. I followed the corridor and it ran only a short distance.

Soon I arrived at the central hub. Computers and instruments lined the walls. They still hummed with numbers blinking on the screens. This wasn’t where I needed to be, but it would help. Every installation was built different, so when the reactor was placed, it was always somewhere else. And even though I had the full capacity of my memories, I didn’t remember where the power source would have been.

I walked over to a computer that appeared to be going through some coding and typed in a few lines of text that brought up the file database. I clicked on a folder and a diagram of the building unfolded. In three dimensions, the outlay of the foundation appeared. From there in the control room I would have to take the stairs off to the right, and go down two levels. The core would be right around there.

A scream erupted from down the hallway, distant but terrifying. That was why I had to arm myself. Even though they should be dead from lack of nutrients, we never got a chance to fully understand the turning. It could have been that their systems went into hibernation mode, or something like that. Maybe they didn’t even need food or water, who knew?

There used to be science division down there trying to study the virus. They even had a few living specimens. Everyone was infected with the virus, dormant or not. If the virus or the specimens broke containment then it would infect the entire installation. And it appeared that was exactly what happened.

              I drew the gun from my belt and moved the flashlight about. Hopefully the creatures weren’t shouting in realization that a new presence had entered their territory.

              Bending around a corner to the right, I moved to the stairwell. I wondered why they wouldn’t cut power to the secondary systems to save on the electricity, but I remembered the core was meant to run for thirty years. And if the virus wasn’t cured, most studies showed a full saturation rate of ninety-nine point nine percent, meaning the world would be over anyway. No reason to worry about saving power in a dead earth.

              The door leading to the stairwell was solid metal with no glass to peek into the corridor. Walking slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible, I approached the door with the gun ready to fire. Nothing inhuman remained here. Gliding through the door, I moved into a dark stairwell. I took one step at a time. I didn’t want to have the same incident as before.

              Never had the darkness scared me this much. Confined, slow-going and quiet, this stairwell had me lost in a timeless bubble of my own guilt.

              After a few agonizing minutes a door loomed in the flashlight’s glare and declared that I had reached the bottom of the stairwell. Slowly letting the door open, I peeked out into the dimly-lit corridor and looked around. Nothing was out of place, and any screams that had echoed in the darkness before were all gone. I slipped through the door, my heartbeat slowing just a bit.

              This level should hold the core. The floor plan was huge. Several walls ran in a circle around the core itself. They were heavy duty, reinforced steel walls that would protect the installation in case the core exploded. Though that was a moot point since all the tests showed it would never detonate anyway. A soft blue hue radiated in the hallways, forcing the idea that something bloomed with life down here.

              I followed the signs and headed off to the right. I passed rooms labeled ‘Genetics,’ ‘Thermodynamics,’ ‘Quantum Mechanics,’ ‘Chronometric Alteration,’ and other rooms with signs reading what would be inside. Several scientists and doctors would have been housed down here. If the scientists had turned, or been killed by the creatures, then there’d be no one to maintain the equipment, especially the core, even if it was meant to be self-sustaining.

              The turning process abruptly filtered into my mind, and I remember the first time I’d witnessed a potential subject taking my fabled cancer cure.

Before the virus had been accidently released, and before we knew about the potential affects, we were testing it on Andrew Fuller. Andrew was an old family friend of my Father’s, and worked in the accounting department of our business. He was seventy-two and dying of lung cancer, a constant smoker of two packs a day since he was twelve. It was a death sentence when we diagnosed him a mere two months before our trials.

              With Fuller, the drug took effect immediately. It healed his grave illness. But it didn’t take long after that before his skin began to crack and bleed. His eyes changed color to a milky substance, and blinded him. Soon he was screaming and thrashing violently, attacking the doctors and breaking containment, or at least, running into the hallways. The security buried a few well-placed shots into his forehead, and my greatest triumph suddenly became the world’s worst virus.

              The mice we tested never showed any symptoms like what happened to Andrew. Needlessly, we tried the treatment on others. They understood what could happen, but all the subjects were dying one way or another. We strapped down the subjects and pumped them full of the “cure”. Every one of the older subjects turned moments after administering the drug, or died from the reaction. But for whatever reason, the younger patients never had the same response. Anyone under the age of
twenty-six
took fully to the drug, healing their illness. But the turning remained dormant until their coming of age.

              No forms of sedation worked to calm the patients once they’d turned. They never slept, never ate, only howled insanely. The timeline for the turning was usually the same. After about five days they would lose most of their hair and teeth. Their eyes would grow a deep shade of purple, though they would be completely blind.

The one thing that every subject showed was increased sensitivity to hearing, as well as communicating somehow with the others who had also turned. Even though they weren’t located in the same rooms, all of those who’d turned seemed to notice the others. We had to put down the subjects once they started to grow claws since it became too dangerous to hold them.

              That was a month before the outbreak. A whole month to have done something. Maybe I could have destroyed the samples or the “cure”. But the firm, and in particular, the board, which my father headed, refused to bomb the whole trials because of “some unfortunate incidents”. I contemplated firebombing the entire office and work labs, but the samples had been moved and duplicated at several installations. I had wasted too much time deciding what to do.

             
Snapping back to reality, I passed by an opening to my left. A blue glow pulsated with energy, a dying energy. I looked around but nothing stirred from the shadows, and only the constant whining of the reactor hummed in the air. The blue light flickered for a moment, returning my eyesight to the object at hand. Through double paneled, bulletproof and moisture-resistance glass, the reactor sat within a confined room.

              “Ok…” I said out loud.

              The first dilemma hit me. I had no idea how to fix the thing. I didn’t design it. I was no engineer. I may have fabricated the five thousand barrier, the
Alaco Cure,
among other things, but never this. A man named Phillips designed the core, and the sphere I’d used to travel through the barrier. He was the mind behind this installation.

The brilliance of the core was that it was the most powerful new energy source ever conceived. Comparable to a tesla coil, but just much more effective. It motorized electrical devices wirelessly, evident as it powered the timer all the way from here. Much like ideas of Nikola Tesla, who had experimented with science like this, Phillips actually had a working version about a year before all of this happened. The prototype was still in the testing phase, but nothing else could be used and so we’d switched on this prototype power source. It should still have twenty-eight more years to go, but it was dying right in front of my eyes. I hadn’t the faintest clue where to begin.

              I ran around the walls and came to the door that led to the sealed core room. The power source wasn’t radioactive, nor was it dangerous really, but Phillips wanted it separated from the environment of a busy science center.

I unlocked the heavy metal door and swung it open, entering the vault. It was so… simple. A plastic stand held the device that almost resembled the sphere I had carried around. But this was much larger. Instead of etching, it had dimples like a golf ball, and it glowed with a much darker blue than my sphere. Also near the top of the orb was a clear cut-away that allowed me to look inside. The inside of the sphere was also incredibly simple. It looked like a liquid, along with a few other electronics, but not much else.

              It smelled sterile but not hot. The orb wasn’t burning or anything. I studied it as I came closer, trying to think of something, anything, to understand what my next move was.

              Then as if answering my question, several dark walkers entered the room. I only stared at them through the glass, not willing to hide anymore. What was the point? The barrier was going to fall with the power failure. Apparently that was what happened at all the other installations.

              I thought of Olivia, who was the only real family I’d ever had. Even my family, my real family, wasn’t really there. Dad was consumed with the business, and mom had died of cancer when I was very young. I had no siblings. Now Olivia was gone, most likely killed because of me. The virus may have taken all of Olivia’s family away. In retrospect, I’d killed all of her siblings, her parents, and anyone she’d cared about. She may have been immune to the initial outbreak of the virus, but it would have remained dormant in her system until twenty-six, when she would most likely turn.

              “It’s about time…” A voice escaped from the corner of the room. I turned, not worrying about the creatures. Instead I refocused on the sound that suddenly burst into existence. It was a voice so familiar yet so foreign. A body in the corner formed whole and approached, the blue hue of the power source giving light to a face I thought I’d never see: my own.

              Right there in front of my eyes, I was staring at myself. He was smiling ear to ear. It wasn’t a reflection. I didn’t think it was my imagination. If it was insomnia, it was a damn good hallucination.

              “You fucking failure,” he said. A frown reformed from the once cruel smile and dictated the direction he was going. He wore the same clothing I did, styled his hair the same way. It was like I was looking into a mirror. It was definitely, me.

“You know, the point that the universe could conjure up someone like you is an absolute mystery. Have you even fathomed what you brought to this world? Extermination? Annihilation? Genocide?” he snarled.

              “It wasn’t meant to…” I pleaded.

              “Your fabled
cure
meant to do what exactly? Kill every last person or turn them into something inhuman? Well congratulations, because that’s what happened. You see that?” He pointed at the power source. “So much for lasting forever, right? Just another fuck-up in a long line of fuck-ups! The barrier… what a ridiculous notion; what an idiotic idea.”

He snarled again. He sauntered over and closed the heavy metal door. One of the creatures crashed against the door and roared in protest, which caused more screams that seemed to shake the double-paneled glass.

              “You’re not getting off that easy. No sir, not by a long shot. You don’t deserve to be ripped to pieces,” he explained.

              “I know,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to argue. It was all true. The world deserved to see me die a worse, longer death. Getting shredded from head to toe with claws would only take a few moments. My suffering should last much longer.

              “Do you? I mean, do you really understand?” He returned to stand in front of me, eyes squinting, as if trying to read me. “Jack and Susan… dead. Olivia? She’s gone. But that doesn’t even remotely compare to destroying an entire planet. All of humanity. All of it. Completely gone, forever dead. Because. Of. You,” he said, pressing a finger into my chest.

I felt the pressure. He was surely no ghost or figment of my imagination. He was as real as it gets. “What a disgrace,” he said and shook his head.

              Rage filled my stomach at the sound of Olivia’s name. I lashed out, striking him squarely on the jaw. His head bent back but he smiled off the blow.