Vigil (37 page)

Chapter Eighty-Five

Fallon Corp.

I stepped back as the grenade rolled to the glass and pushed from the rear wall of the cell, diving, running, toward the explosion. Flame blossomed and my son’s body was vaporised in the blast, flesh blown to pieces in less than a second. Cracks spread out across the glass and I hit it with all my force at the heart of the explosion, arms laced above my head to protect me from the blast and the impact. The glass shattered outward and I dove through the flames, my trouser alight. I ran fast enough to extinguish the flames before they could melt my flesh.

             
The two guards did not even have time to bring their weapons to bear. I smashed their faces with my fists and drank the blood of one with great gulps of thirst. There was nothing like fresh blood.

             
Then I tore both men's heads from their necks and ran along the corridor. The fire alarm was wailing, and the security alarm. The facility was locking down. I could sense that day was breaking above. This was the last day. My last chance to save my soul. But I would never make it out of the facility alive. Even now, through feet of soil and rock and steel I could hear the boots of the security forces being mustered. The facility would be locked down tight. I would not be able to break down the blast doors, no matter how much blood fuelled my muscles.

             
Then I had an idea. I had my memories from before, at last. I had not been able to do anything with those memories while I was locked in the cell, unable to roam this section of the facility, but while there were no physical exits there was one option open to me.

             
The Large Hadron Collider.

             
Hub One would respond to my commands. I could travel where no one could get me. I could go into the past once more and change the future…

             
No. That way lay madness and nothing else. There was no profit in travelling to the past.

             
But I had to get out of the facility. I slowed to a walk while I thought. I could hear a large contingent of armed guards entering the secret facility, now. Breaking into the facility, overriding the codes and entering with their guns and grenades. They would destroy my body beyond resurrection and all would be in vain. In their zealous pursuit of duty they would end the earth. Even now, I knew, my blood would be on its way to John Fallon. The creature would arise in the night. By the next morning all would end, the world, this life that I had come to cherish…

             
I had to stop it, and there was only one way to end it all.

             
I strolled into the control room, before the gateway. With a great burst of strength I wrenched the handle to the room so that the doorway could not be pulled open. They would have to blow it.

             
‘Hub, are you there?’

             
‘Yes, John. I am here.’

             
All this time, I thought, I could have called on Hub One...and never knew. Not until now, when at last, my memories were resurfacing...at last, I was awake. Awake at the end of the dream that was immortality.

             
‘I want you to do something for me, Hub.’

             
‘Yes, John. I am ready to receive commands.’

             
‘I want you to set the LHC in reverse, Hub.’

             
‘
That will result in catastrophic failure of all systems, John. I cannot comply. My first protocol is to protect this facility.’

             
‘If you do not do this, Hub, this facility will be used in the future to destroy mankind. Can you reason this, Hub? If you do not comply now, in the future you will be destroyed utterly. By reversing the flow you will not be destroyed, Hub. You will cease to exist.’

             
‘I cannot reason this. Computing…future flow will disable hub. Request denied.’

             
‘Override protocol, Hub.’

             
‘Unable to override,’
said Hub One simply.

             
The guards were laying grenades against the door.

             
‘Then I’ll have to do this without you, Hub.'

             
I entered the vectors into the computer. Overriding hubs objections. Direct input could not be changed, but Hub didn’t have to comply. Unless I could destroy hub.

             
‘Intruder protocol. Open all doors hub. Comply.'

             
'Are you sure of this course of action, John? My sensors indicate that armed personal present on this level have level four clearance.'

             
'I'm sure,' I said. 'I'm sure.'

             
Hub released the toxin that John himself had once used, way back in 2045.

             
I laughed for the first time with genuine humour as I understood the final piece of the puzzle.

             
I took the dead guard's grenades.

             
I entered the coordinates I needed. I rolled a grenade into the room and stepped through the gateway.

             
I emerged, broken, before the chateau. My chateau.

             
But this time my memory was intact and I knew what I had to do.

             
Paris exploded in nuclear fire behind me. It was inescapable. In every future, Paris burned.

             
In this future, this present, this past, a dishevelled and broken man, his face a map of pain and his body scarred so deeply his flesh is entirely white, stands before the gates of a chateau and prepares to meet himself.

             
Prepares to stand vigil over the end of the world.

*

Vigil

Centuries and thousands of miles travelled, pain and loss endured...am I any wiser than the feral body that is also me, before me, chained to the bed?

             
I have questions. So many questions. But I can't answer them myself.

             
But in the end, how I came by the picture that hangs on the wall of the only woman I ever loved...that question will ever be a mystery.

             
Can I live with questions?

             
I can. That's what people do. And I am more human than most. More human than I ever was.

             
Of course there are questions. I have been through the gateway. Maybe even into the eye of creation.

             
Sometimes you have to live without answers. It doesn't matter, and I think...I know...I am right where I am supposed to be.

             
I only have one thing left to do. To end it before it begins.

             
With a sawing motion, I remove John Fallon's head. It doesn't hurt at all. I take the painting from the wall.

             
It is the only possession I have that matters.

             
When I leave, the chateau burns brightly behind me and Paris burns in the distance.

             
I walk away. I always walk away, always alone. But I am free, now, and until the end of time. I know now, the price of freedom.

             
The price of freedom is vigilance, and to go on living...

             
To go on living. That is the hardest thing of all.

First Draft January 8
th
2008 – April 25
th
2008

Final Draft Completed:
April 18th 2012

Dear Reader,

Thank you for making it to the end. Please visit my Amazon page for more of my work, or consider leaving a review on this, hate it or love it or someplace in between.
Even a simple 'like' or 'tag' can help, too...

Craig

About the Author:

Craig Saunders is the author of many novels and novellas, including Rain, A Stranger's Grave and The Estate. He has stories forthcoming from DarkFuse, and more fantasy tales set in the world of Rythe.

             
He lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and three children, likes nice people and good coffee. Find out more on Amazon, or visit:

             
www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com

             
www.theislandarchive.blogspot.com

             
www.facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor

             
@Grumblesprout

Bonus material to follow!

A three chapter sneak preview of Richard Rhys Jones' terrific The Division of the Damned, and a three chapter sneak peek at A Stranger's Grave!

The Division of the Damned

A Novel by R
ichard Rhys Jones

Copyright © 201
2 Richard Rhys Jones

                                                                                                                                                                                             “Assyria knew the vampire long ago, and he lurked amid the primeval forests of Mexico before Cortes came. He is feared by the Chinese, by the Indian and the Malay alike; whilst Arabian story tells us again and again of the ghouls who haunt ill-omened sepulchres and lonely cross-ways to attack and devour the unhappy traveller.”

The Vampyre, His Kith and Kin, Montague Summers, 1928

Chapter 1

Russia 

1944

    
They flew from tree to tree, as silent and cold as the churning snow around them. Armed only with blade and tooth, they darted through the night with supernatural grace. The dark held no secrets for them as the day held no mercy and, slick and practised, they spread into formation as the quarry neared.

    
On a densely wooded hill five miles away from the German lines, a lone Russian guard stamped his feet to ward off the cold. It was the dead man’s stag, two till three, and he was bone tired. They had driven all day before halting to set up the communications post, then he had serviced his wagon, set up the tented area for the officers and helped position the radio masts. Now, after only three hours sleep, he was back on guard duty and he couldn’t see further than his dire need of a cigarette.

     The war would soon be over
he reckoned. A couple more months and then he could go back to his hometown. There he would find a wife, start a family and work on a farm or in a factory. He would be a hero and, on family gatherings, he would regale them all with stories of how he single-handedly took on the might of the Fascist army and conquered them.

    
Like pouncing arachnids, they dropped from the trees on the unsuspecting camp. The lone Russian’s last sensation was the warm gush of blood spurting from his now lacerated throat and the voracious teeth that greedily violated the wound. As the blackness of death dimmed his sight, he heard the first screams of the officers and men he had been guarding as the enemy wreaked carnage and death. With steel and fang, they killed and fed the way they had always done.

    
No mercy, only butchery and then gorging on the blood of the fallen.