The NEXT Apocalypse (Book 3): AFTER Life: Paradise Read online

  “Not for nothing, but you just tried to murder her, Harmon,” Crenshaw barked. Crenshaw pulled the trigger on the taser and Harmon’s body went rigid as his muscles rebelled against his will.

  He only stopped torturing Harmon because, at that moment, an explosion rocked downtown Toronto. We didn’t merely hear the bomb hit. We felt it as we plunged into darkness, drowned in claustrophobia and disorientation. In the moment before the lab’s emergency lights came on, I backed up until I felt the cool concrete wall against my back.

  As the reverberations ebbed, everyone on Level 3 went silent except for Daniel Harmon. The prisoner let out a grim chuckle. “Turns out the forecast isn’t just blood rain. It’s shit and steel all over the weather map. Your time to shine, Chloe! Can I call you Chloe? Sorry about trying to eat you. I’m not myself lately. Zombies don’t apologize so I’m not one of them anymore … not quite. I really am sorry.”

  He might have been sorry but he’d still kill and eat me the first chance he got. I wanted to take the taser and press the trigger until the battery drained.

  Chapter 2

  DANIEL

  I’m not myself lately. I wondered, what ratio of nanites to brain cells would it take before I wasn’t me at all anymore? Would the nanites keep multiplying until they formed a sloshy slurry in all the crevices, wrinkles and spaces in my brain? The microscopic robots had granted me some sovereignty, but how long did I have before independence lost all meaning? To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, how long before I was more machine than man?

  Dr. Robinson could take control of the mission because she was invaluable. My only value to the nanites seemed to spring from being the first human they’d played with on an intellectual level. I was the First, but they could make me a pet again at any moment. Worse, they could be listening to my thoughts about them. I didn’t want to give them ideas so I tried to focus on what was happening around me.

  As the survivors of the attack on Echidna emerged from the lab, the missile’s devastation was evident. The explosion had not been nuclear, as had been threatened. I guessed that the ordnance must have been an anti-personnel fragmentation bomb. Shattered corpses were everywhere. The dead lay in mounds and mazes. There was no direct route to safety without climbing over bodies. A thick cloud of dust hung in the air like a thick curtain. Shattered glass crunched under our feet as Crenshaw pushed me ahead of him.

  Chloe and her security detail didn’t understand the devastation as I did. Safe in their biohazard suits, they didn’t feel the full effect of the stench: the burnt bodies, the cooked flesh, the tang of blood in the air. I caught the whiff of marrow leaking from bones. Downtown Toronto was an abattoir.

  Under their hoods and behind their faceplates, they’d hear the pulse in their ears and the staccato of each ragged, fearful breath. I listened to the dead. There is an eerie silence to those who are no longer present. Erasure is such a complete and final act, made worse because I knew what the humans didn’t even suspect. No one but me knew that inside every one of those dead zombies had been a person, their mind a prisoner, their body compelled to act on the impulses of an AI with the morality of a brain parasite.

  That was Picasso’s true horror: Utter helplessness in the face of terrible acts, being forced to do awful things you don’t want to do. I wasn’t a cannibal at heart and neither were any of these people. The survivors from the lab saw dead monsters everywhere. I saw ordinary people slaughtered in a war past their understanding and beyond their control.

  It was difficult to run with my hands handcuffed behind my back. Fortunately, we didn’t have far to run. Alphonse, Tom and Jerry were true to their word. The LAV crew returned to pick us up.

  We would have been safe if we were the only survivors of the blast. We weren’t the only survivors. The blast that leveled Hiroshima had survivors. There are always survivors. A couple dozen zombies ran out of the bank complex across the narrow street. More boiled out of the underground plazas like ants from a kicked anthill. I heard them coming before I could see them through the dust. They sounded angry and still healthy enough to be dangerous.

  One of the security detail, a clever fellow in a blue hazmat, gave an odd warning. I suspected he’d been waiting to drop it as if he were in a movie. As he opened fire, the man screamed, “The only good zombie is a dead zombie!”

  Forgive us, I thought. We know not what the hell we do.

  The man who’d tried the one-liner filled with bravado was yanked to the ground first. He popped up a moment later, screaming like a little girl and using the butt of his rifle to bash at his attacker’s skull. He kept at it, cracking bone and helping the zombie the rest of the way down the road to death.

  While he was busy doing that, two woman took him down and wrenched off his hood. He managed to kill one of the women with his pistol. The second bit off his nose. He seemed too distracted to defend himself after that. He did not die quickly or with dignity. Blood and panic made his high, nasal screams sound like they emanated from the bottom of a half-clogged drain.

  The rest of the security team concentrated their fire, killing their brother-in-arms and the zombies who had taken him down. They had bullets enough to cut down the zombies coming at us from the buildings across the street. What they hadn’t counted on was shock and panic as half-burnt, near-corpses rose from the piles of the dead. Though shrapnel had stripped flesh from their bodies, the ragged zombies summoned enough strength to pull humans to the ground and into their maws. From a mound of bodies, many arms reached out, their hands like claws.

  Zombies who had somehow survived the fire and the fragmentation blast looked awful and awfully dead. Their charred flesh smelled sickly sweet. Many were naked, their clothes burnt or torn away. As they rose from the rubble, they moved with slow, tortured deliberation. Dazed but determined to feed, they lurched at us from out of the dust cloud. Despite the wounds to their hosts, the brain parasites fought to survive. Covered in wounds that would soon fester, much of their mangled flesh had been torn aside in bloody flaps that opened and closed as they shambled toward us.

  A building had fallen and blocked our escape route. The LAV waited a couple of streets away. There must have been more than one missile. Perhaps the military had taken down buildings in an attempt to barricade the downtown area. Alphonse and his crew couldn’t get to us and keep a clear escape route. The LAV wasn’t far but we had to run to it.

  The wounded zombies were not fast, but there were enough of them rising and reeling out of the dust that soon our escort’s gunfire lacked deliberation and skill. The shots and shouts became more and more wild. The nightmarish echoes of gunfire, panic and pained screams bounced around, seeming to come from all directions.

  Crenshaw ordered ten men to keep firing to lead the surviving zombies away from the LAV and back toward the Box. “Defend the lab and hole up on Level 2! We’ll come back for you with more reinforcements!”

  The remainder of the team kept firing, clearing our way to the LAV. When the rear hatch dropped, I heard the crunch as the armored door crushed skulls of the fallen. I wondered if the sudden light of day was the last thing those zombies’ brain parasites sensed. Maybe the last of the AI puzzled over the sudden illumination for a second or two before shutting down.

  A couple of zombies reared up beside the armored personnel carrier and lunged for Chloe. Apparently Shelly Priyat had reloaded down on Level 3 because she shot the pair of zombies in their faces.

  As gunfire rang out in volleys behind and around us, Chloe, Shelly, Crenshaw, Arsenault and three more men in biohazard suits clamored in. Tom and Jerry did not wait for more runners to catch up. The hatch rose and shut with a metallic thud. They might have saved one or two more humans had they waited a moment. That was not to be.

  In the passenger compartment of the LAV, Alphonse was surprised to see me. “Back from the dead?”

  “I got delivered from Evil,” I said.

  “You got away from us.”

  “I’m back with a vengeance and read
y to party, laughing in the face of death, living on the razor’s edge, this time it’s personal — ”

  “Somebody shut him up,” Crenshaw said.

  “You’re going to want to talk to me while I’m still sort of me,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ll last. When the AI figures out what it wants to do … well, I don’t know what will happen, actually.”

  “I’m more interested in your cerebrospinal fluid, right now,” Chloe said.

  “Take me out to dinner first?” I suggested.

  “I’m not on the menu, Mr. Harmon.”

  “You could be the dessert menu. Please be careful around me. I bite but, like I said, it’s not me. It’s just my teeth. It’s the AI telling me what to do. It’s irresistible. I’m programmed — ”

  Shelly yanked a black bag down over my head. Then somebody took a cheap shot and slammed his fist into the left side of my head. It had to be Crenshaw. What Crenshaw didn’t know was the nanites were busy shutting down pain signals from my nociceptors. I didn’t know the word nociceptors, but somehow they did.

  I was aware of my jangled nerves but I felt no agony as Crenshaw targeted the joint of my jaw with another hard right hook. Thanks to the AI boiling through my head, pain was just a signal now, easily dismissed. I was not myself and becoming even less so. Little by little, my humanity was slipping away. I never thought I would miss pain, but now its absence worried me.

  Chapter 3

  CHLOE

  I took a few things with me from the Echidna Biosystems lab. We had the corrupted disks from the weapons lab computers and zombie tissue samples. We took Daniel Harmon with us, alive and infected. The thing I left behind was my confidence that everything, no matter how dark it might seem, could work out for the better in the end.

  Downtown Toronto was on fire from Eaton Centre to the Queen’s Quay. Only God could count the dead. The streets were a sea of sadness. Whoever was in charge bombed Toronto so we could escape. I doubted I could arrive at a solution that could make my escape worth the price paid.

  A tank cleared our way again but the LAV didn’t have to travel all the way back to Port Credit. It seemed we’d only just cleared the perimeter of devastation when Alphonse steered us in a sharp turn that took us to an empty school grounds. As the LAV rocked to a halt, I heard the beating of rotors.

  Jerry hauled me to my feet. “Word came down, you’re a VIP. You’ve got a ride waiting at Pearson. You’ll fly from Pearson to Suffield.”

  “I said we aren’t supposed to go there — ”

  “It’s just a stop to switch aircraft, Doc. Then you’ll go on to your final destination, wherever that is. Not my business and above my pay grade, ma’am.”

  Final destination made me think of those movies where Death stalks people at every turn. I don’t believe in omens but, when Jerry said those words, it sure sounded bad.

  “You’ll take a short trip on a Cormorant helicopter,” Tom said. “As soon as the hatch drops, run to the helo. Everyone else will bring up the rear.”

  He moved down the line and touched Shelly’s arm. “You’re to stay with us, Officer Priyat. Sorry, but I don’t have you on my list to get past the velvet rope. Everybody goes but you.”

  I stepped behind Tom and pulled Shelly to her feet. “Do you want to stay?”

  “Of course not but — ”

  “Then come with me. See this through to the end. You saved my life back there. I need a bodyguard. You’re it. Guard my body. If I don’t make it, who’s gonna fix this mess?” I sounded more confident than I felt.

  Shelly gave a small nod.

  “Good. For a minute there, I thought I’d have to get Crenshaw to handcuff you and drag you on the helicopter.”

  Crenshaw heard me and let out a dismissive guffaw.

  That pissed me off so I added, “If Crenshaw’s coming to my party, you are definitely invited. She’s with me, Tom.”

  “But she’s not on the list.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Officer Priyat is on my list.”

  I handed the box of specimens to Shelly. “Hold on to these and guard them with your life … you know, while you’re guarding me.”

  The LAV’s hatch dropped and the Cormorant was just touching down as I reached it. The LAV’s chain gun fired, competing with the roar of the helicopter’s rotors. When I peered back toward the highway, I saw people in the distance running toward us. They ignored the gun and kept coming. The one in the lead was a young woman. A pack of killers ran behind her. At this distance, I strained to see but I couldn’t tell for sure if she was infected. Did she run so fast because terror drove her? Was it hope for escape? Or was it raging, murderous hunger?

  I hope she was a zombie because Alphonse cut her down, same as the others. Maybe she’d been an awful person before the Picasso epidemic struck. I wanted her to be someone who deserved her fate, a crazed serial killer maybe. Chances were excellent she was just another person who paid her taxes reluctantly but on time, drank too much coffee, browsed Facebook too much and worried about the future. Odds were she was just like me.

  I boarded the Cormorant and we rose into the sky. I watched the LAV tear back the way we’d come, back to the city of smoke and blood. They still had to go back to rescue the rest of the security detail at Echidna. I envied Alphonse, Tom and Jerry a little. They had a job to do that was well-defined. They knew what they had to do. I had a big box of tissue samples, a bodyguard and an infected man who seemed awfully eager to murder me with his teeth. The rest were a bunch of guys with guns. Without anything to shoot, they’d probably just hang out and watch me fail to stop Picasso.

  We landed on the tarmac at Pearson beside a huge plane. Someone mentioned it was a Globemaster III. It felt odd to board an aircraft by walking from the runway and up a ramp at the rear of the aircraft. Maybe that’s why I paused at the top of the ramp to look back. I soon wished I hadn’t looked.

  When we’d arrived at Pearson from Aruba, all flights had been canceled. People were still trapped in the airport. If anything, the crowding had become worse. People from nearby communities ran to the airport hoping for a flight to escape the epidemic. Men, women and children pressed to the glass and pointed. They all seemed to be pointing at me.

  The plane’s engines were already powered up. I couldn’t hear those trapped people, but by their faces I could tell they were yelling, pleading to join me. A Globemaster III is a big plane. There was plenty of room.

  Shelly urged me forward. “C’mon. If you want to save them, siddown! Let’s go. We can’t save them all and if we tried to save a few, there’d be a riot. We could lose the plane.”

  I did as I was told, strapped myself into a bucket seat and closed my eyes. I didn’t open them again until I felt the rumble of the wheels stop and we lifted into the air, buoyant and above it all.

  Or so I thought. The pilot pulled us into a steep climb as the engines roared. I hate flying at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times. I turned to Shelly in the seat beside mine. I had to yell to make myself heard. “What’s he doing? Does he think this is a rocket ship?”

  Shelly shrugged. “He’ll level off soon. I gotta get out of this biohazard suit. When I can get to a bathroom, I’m going to pee for about five minutes straight.”

  “You can take it off anytime. Unless Harmon bites you, you’re not going to get infected now.” I pulled off my hood. The air inside the plane was not fresh. It smelled of metal and jet fuel. Still, it was a relief to be free of the biohazard suit, scratch my nose and stop breathing hot, stale air that fogged my faceplate.

  Shelly seemed to take that as a good indication she could take hers off, too. The rest of the security detail followed our example. We all looked shiny with sweat, hair askew and relieved to be out of Toronto’s zombiefest.

  I looked out the window hoping for a glimpse of blue sky. Another plane, identical to our own, flew beside us. Beyond it, two fighter jets escorted us. And still, we climbed at a steep angle.

  Bill Arsenault was
out of his suit, too. He appeared in front of me, steadying himself by a hanging strap. “The other cargo plane has some of the infected we’ve gathered up.”

  “Jesus! For what?”

  “You need to experiment some, right?”

  “The way you say that makes it sound like I’m Frankenstein. I’m a biomedical engineer. And what are those jets for?”

  The CSIS agent didn’t smile. “Don’t mind those Hornets. They’re just here to make sure we get there.”

  “Why wouldn’t we get there?”

  “Forces are at work, Chloe. Forces beyond our control.”

  “Feels like everything is beyond our control,” I said.

  “Something bad is going to happen in a couple of minutes. Stay in your seats and hold — ”

  It wasn’t a couple of minutes. That was the moment the gray day went white, then orange. I squeezed my eyes shut but brilliant light swallowed us. Even when I covered my eyes with my hands, it was too bright.

  A question formed in my mind but I was too dazed by the afterimage of the flash to bring out the words.

  As I opened my eyes, Arsenault threw himself into the seat beside me. He struggled to pull at the straps to buckle himself in quickly. “This doesn’t feel like minimum safe distance.”

  For a second I thought we’d collided with another plane. Or we were on fire. Or someone was trying to shoot us down. Anything was preferable to my dim suspicion. The obvious answer was too horrible.

  The blast wave hit.

  Arsenault was a few seconds too slow getting buckled in. We were thrown sideways, then down and up. The engines screamed in protest as thunder ripped over us. The noise hurt my ears. The vibrations and reverberations shocked my system and shook my heart. I thought the sound itself would tear us apart.