Necropolis Rising (7 page)

Crispin heard the voice of his mother reaching out to him from a dim, dark past. “Careful, Crispin; this one’s got her eye on you!”

Miller began to giggle, and as Heather came to him, her arms outstretched, her hands searching, his giggle turned into laughter; uncontrollable, belly-aching laughter.

From behind the door Richardson beat a frenzied tattoo upon the wood.

Miller doubled over, helpless and Heather fell upon him, her mind focused on nothing but her lust to sate the terrible eternal hunger in her belly; her strength, easily subduing Miller once the hysteria gave way to pain.

She gorged on him, ripping open his throat with ease, biting off the fingers that had first lovingly re-created her, and then violently violated her at a time of vulnerability, just to sate base need.

Had Heather not lost the ability to engage in abstract thinking, she may have enjoyed the irony that tables had been turned; that Crispin Miller was now an object of her
desires
.

She would enjoy him as much as he’d enjoyed her. And contrary to Marcia Miller’s doctrine, Heather Monaghan wasn’t planning on leaving Crispin alone any time soon.

He had far too much to offer.

***

8

Slowly, Kunaka approached the road block, his eyes fixed, his brow marred by three deep lines.

Up ahead there were seven troopers and one huge barricade. The soldiers were wearing biochem masks and steel helmets; their boots planted shoulder width apart and regulation issue.

The barricade was far more makeshift: a portable barrier made up of two concrete blocks planted both side of the road, and bridged by a striped horizontal pole.

What the road block lacked in conviction, the arsenal protecting it gave greater credence. Each trooper sported an SA80 and parked to one side of the barricade was a Challenger 2 tank, its 120 millimeter canon aimed towards to city.

“
These guys are packin’ some serious shit, O’Connell,” Kunaka whispered into his headset. “I think there could be a biochem alert in play; they’ve got masks in situ.”

“
Ok,” O’Connell’s voice fizzed in his ears. “We’re taking enough risks without adding to ‘em. Get your masks on, guys.”

As the Mastiff approached, one of the soldiers stepped forward motioning for it to stop with a wave of his hand.

Obediently, Kunaka pulled the truck up short and a Corporal came over to the window. The big man wound the window down in readiness. He noted that the Corporal had his finger outside the trigger guard of his SA80, and pointing down the barrel.

Safety’s off. A bad sign. It meant the guards were prepared.

Expectant.

“
What’s your business, soldier?” the Corporal said, peering up at Kunaka through his face-plate. His voice was raspy, his breathing accentuated by the filter hanging like twin tin cans from his chin.

“
Special orders, Corp,” Kunaka said, his lie momentarily hidden by a mist of carbon dioxide settling on the inside of his visor. In his lap, his hand curled around a high powered pistol.

In this game a lie was only going to get you so far. But you still needed people to play. Sometimes people were reluctant. Sometimes they needed persuasion.

“
I’m going to have to clear that,” the Corporal said turning away slightly to confer with his headset. “What’s your TAC number?”

Kunaka told him. It was made up on the spot; a blasé response since the high power frequency jammer O’Connell was currently activating in the back of the truck wasn’t going to allow the Corporal to relay it to Jack Shit.

“
Echo Bravo eight to command, come in over,” the Corporal said into his radio.

A burst of static told him that command wasn’t listening. He repeated the call in but the outcome was the same, a fizz of static and little else.

The Corporal turned back to the truck where Kunaka waited; his thumb stroking the Browning’s cold steel.

“
I’ll need to see some papers,” the Corporal snuffled through his filter.

Kunaka shook his head. “Sorry Corp, but this is a Special Ops initiative. There are no papers.”

Inside, Kunaka breathed a sigh of relief. Outside he remained cool, like a soldier ready to execute his orders.

But he couldn’t really believe they were getting away with this. These guards were either sloppy or they had a clear remit. The tank aiming its canon towards the city skyline underpinned this statement. These guys were more concerned about letting people out than stopping people going in. This was about
containment
. And it made him uneasy. Containment was an interim strategy; it bought the brass time while they came up with a solution. More often than not that solution was to neutralize the threat.

He looked at the swatch of light marking the city skyline and clucked his tongue, his mind falling back to a time when the world was far simpler; where the world was about right and wrong and being safe.

He is suddenly back in Kingston, his Grandpa Joe sitting on the porch, the rocking chair making the paint-peeled boards creak as he watches the nebulous black clouds gather on the Atlantic’s wavering horizon. Stu Kanaka, six years old, peering up at his gramps, amazed at how someone could be
that
old.

“
The devil’s comin’, my boy,” Gramps says as the first roll of thunder comes in from the sea. “An’ he got his eyes and mouth wide open fer us today.”

Kunaka nodded behind his face plate, the city had replaced the sea storm; but Grandpa Joe’s words still had a hold on him.

The Corporal appeared to mull this current situation over for a long moment. “You guys have got to be crazy to go in there,” he finally said. “But I’d be crazier still if I let you in without sanction from my CO. Your team will have to stand down, until I contact COM by cell.”

Stand off
, Kunaka thought. The Corporal was doing the right thing; he had his orders after all. Now Kunaka had a job to do.

The Browning was now out of his lap and in Kunaka’s mitt. He flicked off the safety.

But before he could do anything, Grandpa Joe’s long distant prophecy came back with such potency it left Kunaka hesitant.

Because, without warning, all Hell broke loose.

***

“
So, tell me, Shipman, if Intel gave you this, what can your team do about it?”

Carpenter handed the smart phone back to the Major who was now pressing keys, the tiny screen imprinting a bright white square upon each of his brown eyes.

“
My orders are simple, Colonel,” Shipman replied softly. “Retrieval.”

“
Retrieval
?” Carpenter echoed. “And what do you plan to retrieve?”

Again, Shipman passed the smart phone to his superior. An image was on the screen, a photograph of a youth, possibly late teens. It was difficult to tell, Carpenter was of an age where all kids and young adults looked the same.

“
Who is he?”

“
Our target,” Shipman said.

“
Don’t play games with me Major,” Carpenter warned. “This is still my COM and you will give me straight answers. Are we clear?”

“
Yes, sorry, Colonel,” Shipman said, though it appeared forced. “His name is Thom Everett. He is nineteen years of age and the only child of Pauline and Arthur Everett.”

“
Should I know these people?”

“
No, they are civilians and unimportant. Until now.”

“
So why now?”

Shipman leaned forward, his fingertips pressed together to form a diamond.

“
Approximately nine and a half thousand people per square mile live in Birmingham, Colonel. The fallout from the blast that released Whittington’s Lazarus Initiative is estimated at three miles. No mathematician is required to tell us that for a significant amount of the local population death has come.”

It was a grim yet fantastic statistic. Carpenter shook his head in disbelief.

“
What are the chances of survival?”

“
My mission is codenamed
Necropolis
, Colonel. The City of the Dead. I guess my superiors were less than optimistic when they received the initial brief.”

Silence stretched out, it seemed poignant given the horrendous nature of their discussion. But silence never gave out solutions.

“
So what has changed their initial appraisal?” he asked, but the answer came shortly after Carpenter said it. “This boy?”

“
We have Sir Alan Coe, the CEO of Phoenix Industries, in custody,” Shipman said. “Not a happy bunny, but better than being in the pot. Sir Alan denies knowing anything about Whittington’s activities, of course. Even went as far as suggesting that the good doctor was a maverick. Couldn’t explain where Whittington was getting his funding from. The brass believes him though. Rationale? He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his knighthood. Can you believe that?”

Carpenter said that he could believe that, he could
totally
believe that. “He must’ve given up something,” Carpenter guessed. “Off the record?”

“
Of course,” Shipman said with a wry smile. “Isn’t it always the case? Coe told us that Whittington had approached Phoenix Industries with his research and they turned it down.”

“
Ethics?”

“
Commerce,” Shipman explained. “It wasn’t marketable.”

“
Meaning?”

“
Whittington’s research evidence was unreliable. His animal tests had varied results. Sure the Lazarus Initiative worked on some subjects. But others died and stayed dead. But one or two appeared to be immune to the process altogether. Coe fervently denies that such experiments were escalated beyond the animal phase, and tested on human subjects, with Phoenix Industries’ knowledge or consent.”

“
Yet such a comment shows that he had knowledge that this was exactly Whittington’s intention,” Carpenter said astounded.

It was Shipman’s turn to nod, a small thing, barely noticeable. “Ten percent of the local population are about to face the apocalypse, Colonel. And the boy, Thom Everett has the potential to be their saviour.”

“
He was
tested
?” Carpenter was now agog. The scale of this news was remarkable. “How could this happen?”

“
This is where Coe hides behind his assumed ignorance,” Shipman said. “All he says, off the record, was that Whittington found a test group and covertly applied his research. The boy survived, deemed immune.”

“
And his parents?”

“
Did not feature in the equation.” Shipman’s reply was blunt.

“
And you’re going in there to get him?”

“
That’s our mission,” Shipman conceded. “The boy is the only known person to have survived the process. The brass have considered worse case scenario, what if one of
The Risen
escapes the cordon? We could be looking at widespread contagion. The boy is our only hope of finding a way of containing it.”

“
The Risen
?”

“
It’s what the brass chooses to call the infected,” Shipman mused. “It’s better than the
alternative
; less dramatic, I guess.”

“
So how is it spread?” Carpenter asked quietly.

“
Come and watch the CCTV monitors,” Shipman said. “You’ll see first hand.”

***

The chaos at the barricade began with one of the troopers yelling a warning.

“
Corp, we have movement, ahead!”

Kunaka noted that there was excitement to the voice, the cork coming out of an hour of expectation, wanting something, and not wanting something, to happen.

“
Wait here!” the Corporal ordered Kunaka, and headed off to the barricade, where all of the troopers were now facing the city, rifles poised.

“
O’Connell, over?” Kunaka said into his short wave.

“
Here. What’s happening? Over.” O’Connell sounded impatient. Too much time cut out of the loop.

Kunaka briefed him, his words clipped as he watched the drama unfold outside the Mastiff’s windshield. But he needed to establish what was riling his camouflaged colleagues, so pulled a pair of night vision binoculars from the dash and jammed the onto his faceplate.

His vista turned to a speckled green fog. In the foreground the soldiers remained with their backs to him, all attention drawn to a flare of lights several hundred metres ahead.

Vehicles. Lots of them. A mechanized armada moving towards them and at speed.

The more vehicles that came into view the more Kunaka was drawn to the portentous words of Grandpa Joe, words of storms and devils and hunger. This wasn’t so much an armada as an exodus. The superstition of his childhood threatened to settle on him like a huge, hungry parasite, feeding on rational thought; he fought against it, and drove it back into the deep rooted darkness, where, for now, it sat brooding, waiting for its time in the light.

Then, from the Challenger, a bull horn ripped through the night.