Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model (18 page)

65. Disposal

This time it was easier than yesterday - they didn’t have to leave the base, and all that was required was quickly filling a shallow trench made by a bulldozer with sand.

Boris and Donahue were luckier than others - their tent had not been burned, so they had somewhere to go after breakfast to fall on the bed and sleep without dreams. Natasha's fingers still trembled, and she was sure that she wouldn’t be able to even close her eyes, but still fell asleep before her head hit the pillow. It was seven o'clock in the morning.

They woke up at three and went to dinner; Natasha again began to pour soup into a plastic bowl. After they finished lunch, Boris and Donahue returned to the digging - mobilized civilians rebuilt the defensive line, badly damaged during the night battle. But they also received another job – to hastily bury rows of black plastic bags in a shallow trench.

The work was well organized – the border of the trench had been marked by thin red sticks and the bags had large bright yellow tags that contained the minimum information necessary for subsequent reburial - sex, age, name, and date of birth. There were about fifty bags.

The hasty burial confirmed his assumption that the quarantine was still in force, so it was still unknown when the refugees would leave the base. Some had tried to get in contact with their relatives and calm them down, but unsuccessfully - until further notice there would be no contact with the outside world. Mobile phones couldn’t find the network, and even the radio wasn’t working, thanks to tightly controlled and powerful interference. Nobody knew what was going on outside. No one could talk about what was going on inside.

After they finished work there, they walked a mile and began to dig a second trench. There were fewer bags here, and on the labels ranks were listed as well as names – the marines buried their dead here. Donahue called Boris, pointing to the battlefield, where a giant bonfire flared, next to which bulldozers crawled.

“What is it?”

“Disposal. They’re burning the bodies of our dead enemies.”

Judging by the flames, the marines had poured tons of gasoline onto the fire, trying to burn everything possible, rather than throwing the bodies into a large crater and covering them with earth. Boris remembered his enemies, the same ones that had attacked the convoy, remembered how they looked. They looked like madmen; in this he had no doubt. Rabies? It was quite possible, and so it was understandable why the marines were so thoroughly getting rid of the corpses. They were certainly not bluffing about the quarantine.

“Donahue, did you speak today with your friends from plant management?”

“Yes, I spoke with one procurement officer, because I thought he might know more. Nothing.”

“Didn’t want to talk about?”

“He doesn’t know anything. He and his partners tried to talk with some officers, offering a lot of money to make one call, but the marines threatened to beat, if they repeated their request. One tried to threaten them with court, and the marines broke his glasses and almost knocked out his teeth
.
Boris, what do we do next?”

“The same as now - work where we’re ordered to, get lunch and go down into the trench when requested.”

“Do you think there will be another battle?”

“Maybe,” said the paratrooper, glancing at the funeral pyre and bulldozers. “Maybe there will be more fights, but certainly not as heavy as yesterday. It seems that last night the marines killed most of the enemies.”

“Well, if we have won the war, how long do we have to wait for the plane? I can’t wait to get out of here, I'm sure that’s the same for you and your girlfriend, too.”

“I don’t know. They can’t keep us here forever, two thousand refugees have many relatives on the mainland. The relatives in the United States don’t know anything about their loved ones, but have probably already realized that there is something terrible happening in the valley. They will call all newspapers and TV channels, giving interviews, writing petitions to court - in short, they will make a loud noise and the commanders will have to react. They can’t forget about us, so the authorities will be forced to do something. I think it won’t take long, but for now keep digging.”

“It would be wonderful if I can get home for the weekend, but, just in case, our contract remains in force.”

“Yes, it’s possible that the contract will come into force,” said Boris, looking at Crocodile. There were no mechanics near, the repair had already been completed and the helicopter was ready to fly. It would be great to fly out of here on that machine, first through the mountains, and then…

Boris laughed at these ridiculous ideas. To escape on Crocodile, he had to find someone who could fly it. Boris couldn’t, and, most likely, neither could Donahue and Natasha. Where was the pilot? Somewhere here, near him. Why hadn’t they gone? The quarantine must be mandatory for all, and so anyone who made a stop on this base, would be forced to linger here for some time. He wondered what the owner of the toy town was thinking about what was happening. Pleased with it, or not?

66
.
The war, which no one knew

No one has seen this war. No one heard gunfire and engines roar, no one saw fire arrows of ballistic missile warheads, piercing the upper atmosphere and dazzling flashes of nuclear explosions. And yet, it was a war, no less fierce and ruthless than war, to which man is capable.

On one side of the front were hordes of the great conqueror, whose battle-hardened army terrified the human race back in the days when Pharaohs built the pyramids in honor of themselves. Egyptian kings wanted to keep the memory in this life and to ensure their power in life followed, clearly realizing that this followed life inevitably come, in spite of all their tricks. And often great conqueror’s army provides to Pharaoh his proper place in the pyramid; however, it kills the builders of these cyclopean structures with equal determination.

Century evolved in the Millennium, great kingdoms were born and died, kings of the Earth continued to build the tombs, and the great conqueror continued his endless campaign. He cruelly mocked naive attempts to exorcise his hordes using prayers and rituals, as previously ruthlessly cracking down his victims. He will not accept surrender - only the complete destruction. It doesn’t matter who was the victim, it doesn’t matter what country, position in society and the possessed - the great conqueror showed striking justice to his enemies, killing beggars and kings.

Not all surrendered without a fight; they tried to resist the conqueror in ancient times. Initially, when no one knew what enemy, they are dealing with; the resistance was useless and meaningless. But then, when man realized that is killing him, his resistance became stronger and more accurate. On the invading army unleashed first blows a variety of chemical substances, then surgical instruments, and then radiation entered into battle.

Combination of chemicals has been continuously improved; surgery became more precise, radiation burning soldiers of invisible army. The man studied hard to defend, and now not every invasion of the great conqueror ended with an unconditional victory, as in the old days, and now he often had to retreat from the battlefield, not readily acknowledging defeat. But Cancer, the great conqueror and king of all diseases aren’t going to back down; on the contrary, he only stepped up his offensive, in its own way learning to resist medical progress.

In this particular battle, one of the many millions that great conqueror leads every day around the world, his opponent was strong, smart and most importantly, well knew the rules of the invisible war. Against cancer used the most modern drugs, insanely expensive and often don’t pass the test series. The best doctors made extremely complex operation; radiation strikes a blow by blow. And yet the great conqueror reaffirmed his greatest glory killer of all time, one after the other breaking all defense lines. Invisible army withstood the blow of drugs, skillfully throwing metastasis overcome surgery and survived even hard radiation - radiotherapy did so often that its further application will kill the patient before cancer will. The victory is here, the enemy fortress is about to fall, a couple more hits and it's all over. Countdown counting the last days.

And then there was something unprecedented, which has never happened since the great conqueror drove to the grave his first victim - his army met with equal enemy on the battlefield. This unknown enemy extraordinarily reminiscent the army of the great conqueror, and acted in a similar way - quickly penetrated everywhere, causing attacks from all sides. Cancer cells were exposed to total destruction, unknown enemy soldiers found them everywhere, no matter how they camouflaged, and destroyed with a jeweler's precision. And then came the second wave of defenders, like groups of worker ants, who promptly recovery the damaged sectors, erasing all traces of the cancer. And the great conqueror retreated, first time shamefully fled from his positions under the pressure of someone who was stronger.

Fulfilled combat mission and fully cleanse the metastases, nanomachines continued recovery work - carrier heavily damaged, and in this state unsuitable for further use. Dangerous chemical compounds, in large numbers entered into the body, were dismantled at the atomic level and then used to reconstruct the radiation burned cells. Now carrier’s life isn’t in danger, if nanomachines that provided this life, will always receive the necessary fuel.

67
.
Scientific experiment

She would have to wait for the final results, because there was still a lot of research to do. But Palmer was convinced that the disease had receded. Not only did the first tests suggest it, but there were more obvious signs. The pain was gone.

She made herself a Zero Model injection yesterday, a
t
ten o'clock, thus becoming the first person to knowingly and voluntarily expose herself to the actions of alien nanomachines. It was easy to make the injection unnoticed by the laboratory personnel – they were all evacuated to the shelter, when it became clear that the infected army was going to assault. Palmer announced that would not go with them, and they weren’t surprised; they knew about her terminal illness, and understood why she saw no reason to worry about the shelling. Chief and his fighters went on the defensive, and Palmer, left alone, prepared for the most important science experiment in her life.

Turning on the diagnostic machine, the dying woman applied the injection of infected blood into a vein in her left hand. A network of sensors tracked the explosive growth of the nanomachines, rapidly producing copies due to the destruction of blood. But more important were her own feelings, the cold wave that swept over her entire body. Bronson hadn’t mentioned this symptom; but in the midst of battle in the burning warehouse, he probably hadn’t noticed it.

Palmer wasn’t surprised about that – the other infected received the Zero Model along with heavy, almost fatal wounds, and couldn’t calmly monitor what was happening. In addition, almost all of them were rapidly losing blood at the same time, but she has no bleeding; therefore, the usual lack of fuel for the nanomachines wasn’t a factor. And yet the new structure in her body had already started to work. She could feel unusually fast weight loss. All the other infected had also lost weight, the nanomachines processing adipocytes into something necessary for their survival. Judging by the first analysis, this phenomenon was somehow connected with the exchange of oxygen. It would need to be clarified in the future, if she lived - her emaciated body might not survive this additional weight loss.

Immediately after the introduction of Z-Model, she injected a powerful nutrient composition used by Air Force pilots. She had used this composition for a long time, and perhaps the energy boost would keep her from exhaustion.

Surprisingly, despite the weight loss, she felt no pain, just a pleasant feeling of lightness, that Francis called the release. It was possible that it would release her from life entirely, but if so then it would be a pleasant experience, not pain and unconsciousness, which she feared. Her pulse and breathing slowed down, and body temperature dropped. Her heart took a last two beats and stopped.

Judging by the diagnostic machine, she was unconscious for about three minutes, and cardiac arrest was the last thing she remembered. Now, with the clinical death left behind, her heart was beating very quickly - one hundred and ten beats per minute – and her temperature shot up to forty, her breathing as though she had just finished the marathon. At first, she wanted to bring her temperature down, but then realized that she shouldn’t do that, she shouldn’t do anything.

All right, this was the normal cycle of change in her body, which had become the new way after the nanomachines transformed it. Body temperature flew to forty-two Celsius but then declined, when she will get fresh blood. And she could handle the heart palpitations and lack of oxygen, using a series of breathing exercises. Now she just had to wait.

Outside blazing fires, the shots of hundreds of guns and engines roaring merged into a single chorus, and she lay on a medical table with her eyes open, analyzing what was happening. The nanomachines changed her body, transforming it according to some unknown mission. Those who had left the Zero Model on Mars naturally knew why they did it, but she could only make assumptions and would maybe never know why and for what purpose it was done. But, most importantly, she knew right now that with Z-Model she could live forever.