End of Days (29 page)

Coming to a door, Parker pushed it open and pulled Sheppard through. They were in a small stairwell now. Parker slammed the door closed behind them.

“Climb,” he ordered. “Go up until you reach the top, the door that leads to the roof. But whatever you do, do
not
go through that door. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Repeat it to me,” Parker said.

“Climb the stairs and stop at the door.”

“Good. Don’t even
touch
the door. Understand?”

Sheppard didn’t know why, but he understood what he was supposed to do. He nodded. The sounds of voices and footsteps from the corridor were getting louder.

“Now get going!” Parker barked.

“What about you?” Sheppard asked.

“I’ll catch you. Just get going, now!”

He didn’t need to be told again. He ran up the first steps, hitting the landing in a few bounds, and after making the turn he could no longer see Parker. He followed the concrete stairs up, flight after flight. They were blocked in at each landing, no doors or windows, just concrete walls and floors. He started to count—he knew he had already climbed six flights, or three floors. He had no way of knowing how far much farther he had to go, but it couldn’t have been more than four or five floors.

He tried to hurry but his legs were getting tired and his breathing was becoming more laboured. He stopped, bent over, and tried to catch his breath. He was sweating and his heart was racing from both the climb and the terror that he was feeling. He wondered why he couldn’t open or even touch the door at the top, and why Parker hadn’t just come up with him. And where was Parker now?
And what would he do if something happened to him?

His silent thoughts were shattered by explosions of gunfire and the chilling screams—voices raised in anger and terror and pain—that echoed up the stairwell.

He was shocked, stunned, and terrified. His instinct was to run away, up the last few flights to the top to do what he was told. But what about Parker? What was going to happen to him? Sheppard looked down at the pistol he was still clutching in his hand. He couldn’t just leave his friend below by himself. Maybe he could help. Maybe he would only die with him, but still, he had to try.

Sheppard moved back down the stairs, gravity pulling him faster than either his legs or his fears should have allowed him to move. From below he heard long blasts from an automatic weapon interspersed with single shots. He could hear voices getting louder and louder. He turned at the landing and froze in place—it was Parker, struggling against three, no, four men, blood flowing from his head. They were striking him with their fists, and one raised a club above his head, drawing it back to strike Parker!

Sheppard raised his pistol and fired. The club dropped from the man’s hand and he started to spin and fall. As he fell, he looked up, and his eyes locked for a split second with Sheppard’s before he crumpled to the ground. Sheppard fired again at a second man and he fell backwards down the stairs.

Parker punched a third, who tumbled over, and the fourth jumped backwards down the steps so that the wall of the stairwell provided protection.

In a few bounds Parker was by Sheppard’s side. “Get climbing! Quickly, climb!”

Side by side the two men raced up the steps. Any hint of tiredness in Sheppard’s legs was gone, overwhelmed by the adrenaline pumping through his veins and the sounds of feet rushing up behind them!

Flight after flight they raced until they reached the top and the closed door. Parker pounded on the door.

“It’s me, it’s Parker, and I have Sheppard!” he screamed through the door.

Without waiting for a reply he threw open the door. Instantly they were enveloped in the noise and wind of a waiting helicopter. There was another security officer and he was standing, assault rifle in hand, aiming it straight at them!

Parker practically tossed Sheppard into the open side door of the chopper, and then he and the other security agent jumped in. With the door still open, them barely inside, the engine of the helicopter raced as it lifted off, veered to the side, and raced away into the night sky.

Slowly and carefully the men started to disentangle themselves. Parker got free and slammed the door of the chopper shut, and some of the sound and all of the rushing wind died away.

“I started to think we were going to have to leave without you,” the man said to Parker.

“And where were you going to go?” Parker questioned.

“That’s what kept us on the ground. But we made it out just in time,” he said, gesturing out of the window as the chopper again pitched to the side.

Below in the darkness there were patches of brilliant light—fires were blazing throughout the complex, smoke and flames reaching up into the sky. It was frightening and awe-inspiring all at once.

“This is what you were waiting for. Give this to the pilot,” Parker said as he produced a small piece of paper from his pocket. “These are the coordinates of the jet that’s going to take us the rest of the way.”

He took them and went to the cabin of the craft, leaving Parker and Sheppard alone in the back.

“Are you okay?” Parker asked.

Sheppard shook his head. “I killed a man … two men, maybe. I took their lives.”

“No, you didn’t,” Parker said firmly. “Everybody down there is going to be dead in five days, with or without your help. You
saved
a life—mine—as well as your own, and the lives of the other two men in this helicopter. If you hadn’t completely disregarded my direction and done what you did, none of us would have got to our destination, none of us would have had a future. So don’t even think about it anymore.”

“It’s not that easy,” Sheppard said. Maybe it would have been easier, he thought, if he hadn’t looked the man in the eyes.

Sheppard looked down and was shocked to see that he was still clutching the pistol. He felt a sense of revulsion and his stomach did a full flip, and he wondered if he was about to throw up. Maybe he needed some air. He pushed open a small window in the side of the helicopter and a breeze
rushed in. The cool night air felt good, and his stomach started to settle.

There was still one thing that would make him feel better. He reached over and dropped the pistol out the open window and into the night sky below.

Sheppard sat at a table at the edge of the dining hall. He was ravenous—they’d eaten very little over the two days it had taken them to reach the facility. The helicopter had taken them the first two hundred kilometres, then they’d had a ten-hour jet flight, finally landing in an isolated location where an all-terrain vehicle awaited them. They’d then travelled the remaining eight hundred kilometres. It had been slow, travelling cross-country and along nearly deserted back roads.

The people they had occasionally passed were most often on foot or horseback or in a carriage. Their vehicle—high-tech, highly defended, and heavily armed—was one of the few things on the road that still had fuel to power it. Everybody was moving westbound, away from the impact sites, just as they were. The only difference was that those people would all die, and the six of them in the vehicle—Sheppard, Parker, the other security agent, the
helicopter pilot, and the two pilots of the jet—would live.

That was hard for Sheppard to accept. Some of the people he saw were just children, who waved and smiled as they drove by. He kept wondering if they couldn’t perhaps take one or two along with them. He would happily have traded places with a child, but of course that wasn’t possible. Even if he’d chosen not to go, they wouldn’t have allowed a replacement.

Now Sheppard kept looking up from his food to the people who surrounded him. Here, too, many were children, a fact that made him happy. He did a quick headcount—there had to be more than two hundred children and young people sitting around, eating, talking, and dozens of them seemed to be playing chess or were occupied with their computers. He sat there thinking that he could be in a school cafeteria, watching the students have their lunch before they headed back to their studies.

But they weren’t heading back to class. Soon they’d be heading down into the depths below, sealed in, safe from the events that were to unfold on the surface. He knew that once those doors were sealed
he
would never see the surface again, but those children would. At least he hoped they would. It made him feel good to think that they would survive, and that from their survival would come their children and the future of the human race. These were the sparks, and from those sparks, he hoped, would grow a flame that would fan out across the planet once again.

Somehow that made it all seem better … no, not better, just not as terrible.

“Dr. Sheppard, it’s good to see you!”

He looked up. It was Joshua Fitchett and the boy. What was his name? Billy … that was it, wasn’t it? He had never been good with names—or faces, for that matter.

“Believe me, it’s good to be here. And please, call me Daniel.”

“And you can call me Joshua, although hopefully we’ll have a good few years to become better acquainted. You remember Billy, of course.”

“Of course. Good to see you both again.”

“I was beginning to think that you weren’t going to accept my offer of sanctuary here at our facility,” Fitchett said.

“I wasn’t sure if I could, in all good conscience. And in truth we barely made it,” Sheppard said. “If it hadn’t been for Parker … Have you seen him this morning?”

“Actually, I’ve already put him to work. He’s reviewing perimeter defences with my chief of security. As soon as he’s through I’ll arrange for the two of you to be given a tour of your new home, our underground facilities.”

“That would be wonderful. I’m looking forward to it.”

“But first, I must formally thank you for honouring my request and providing us with the rocket fuel.”

“I’m just happy that I was able to help, although I did wonder—I
do
wonder—what you’re planning to do with it.”

“And what did you imagine we needed it for?” Fitchett asked.

“Initially, I wondered if somehow the rocket fuel could be used to provide power for the complex,” he said. “But then I realized that many things could be used as fuel, and
you specifically wanted rocket fuel. Therefore I assumed you were going to launch a rocket.”

“A sensible assumption. And the reasons for us to launch a rocket would be …?” Fitchett questioned.

“Being underground, you would be potentially safe but blind. By launching a rocket that contained a satellite you would be provided with an eye in the sky. It would let you know when the planet had recovered enough for life to return safely to the surface.”

Sheppard believed that was the reason he had been invited. They wanted to have his help with the launch, to establish the orbital path, to interpret the data as it began to stream in.

“We will have eyes in the sky, orbiting the planet,” Fitchett confirmed.

Sheppard leaned forward in his seat. “That is nothing short of brilliant,” he said.

“Thank you. But we aren’t simply launching
a
satellite,” Fitchett said.

“More than one?”

Both Fitchett and Billy laughed.

“I’m going to ask young Billy to explain things to you. After all, he is soon going to be in charge. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few hundred things to do and less than three days to do them.”

Fitchett rushed off, in full stride and at full speed, as always.

“I think I’d better show you,” Billy said, “because if I just tell you, you probably won’t believe me.”

——

Billy was right. But for Sheppard, even seeing wasn’t making the believing a whole lot easier. The technology that Billy was showing him at the launch site belonged more to the realm of science fiction than realistic expectation.

“I can’t conceive of how
one
of these ships could have been constructed without my knowledge … but
five
 … that’s beyond the realm of possibility,” Sheppard muttered. “It’s amazing that enough materials and resources could have been marshalled to allow this to happen.”

“It’s more than amazing,” Billy said. “But in the last few months I’ve learned never to doubt anything that Joshua puts his mind to. Besides, I think he had lots of help from the outside. You’re not the first person from the International Aerospace Research Institute to arrive here over the past few weeks.”

“Yes,” Sheppard said, “I’ve discovered that there were many things going on that I was entirely unaware of. I guess I should simply be grateful that we have an alternative … really, I guess, two alternatives. How many people will be going into space?”

“Twenty in each rocket.”

Sheppard looked confused. “You mean twenty in
total
—four astronauts on each ship—correct?”

“No, in total there are one hundred of us who will be launched into space.”

“That’s … that’s unprecedented. The orbiting space station, at its peak, held only fifty people.”

“I know all about the space station. We’re going to be docking with it.”

Billy explained the situation to Sheppard, as Fitchett had explained it to him. How the space station was still functional and responding to commands to move it into a protected orbit around Earth, away from collision with any of the fragments. How the children chosen for the mission had the knowledge and training to fix any problems and create a fully functional living space.

“It is fairly roomy,” Sheppard agreed. “Although for a hundred people, for years to come, I suspect it will become rather claustrophobic.”

It was becoming increasingly clear to Sheppard why, in fact, he was here.

“I don’t know if you know, Billy, but I was instrumental in the design, launch, and assembly of the space station.”

“I know … Joshua told me.”

“I’ll be able to provide information and direction, trouble-shoot, and generally help with any questions about the station, or how to repair or modify it.” He sighed. “In a few days, you’re going to be living my dream, going into space.”

“You wanted to be an astronaut?” Billy asked.