Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 (23 page)

  "It becomes rather obvious that the fragment is here," she noted to the meteorite, "while the convoy was stopped there," Tasha granted.  The circumstance did start to look suspicious once she mentioned it to us.

  "Your father left the rock sample here on purpose?" Thorn began to pry with a puzzled look.

  "I was only ten years old when the event happened, and like most people did, we scrambled to save our family.  My father would only accept the mission on the condition that he could take me along," Tasha revealed, "he was a hired mercenary, but he wasn't stupid.  He didn't trust anyone, and wasn't going to leave his own daughter in the hands of their inept child care services, especially after seeing the horrific conditions that existed at their quarantine camps.  Honestly, my father didn't have much confidence in the military industry either.  After a having a heated debate with their lead scientist we were escorting one night, he left me and a few others here while he advanced to the target site to deliver their science technician, and he never returned," she conceded.

  "We waited here as ordered for as long as we could, until we finally decided to send out a scouting party," Ava explained, "with no working GPS devices since the satellites had been knocked out, we only had a single mission map to track them by; which we lost when the soldier carrying it was jumped by a small mob of infected on the roadside.  The ghouls took more than a few of us that day," she added grimly.

  "Luckily we had enough supplies here and were snowed in through the first winter.  It wasn't until we took a full inventory that we found this specimen sample tucked under a pile of boxes where it had been hidden," the young girl answered, pointing back to the jagged stone.
  "So, you're saying your father intentionally left the meteorite behind?" I reiterated with a mild measure of shock.

  "Apparently so, along with a short note he left for us relating his concerns there was something amiss from what he had gleaned from the lead scientist during their dispute that night; and he chose to make a personal resolution, if not a tactical decision, based on his suspicions," Tasha added.

  "We heard the rumble in the mountains that night, but it wasn't until the following year after the spring thaw that we discovered the collapsed tunnel to the base.  We don't know exactly what had happened, but there had been some type of an explosion in the underpass.  Considering the circumstances, we suspect the detonation was intentional."

  Tasha's companions continued to outline how they had once made their way to the cliffs above the isolated base in their effort to seek some answers, but failed to pick up any radio traffic in the area.  They discovered there was still electrical power to the base when they had last seen it, though it appeared there had been an incident that had damaged one of the buildings, and the rogue infected had overrun the grounds.

  It would have been suicidal to go back there, and far too risky to haul around that frail sample container on such a dangerous climb while not even knowing if there was anyone left alive at the base to deliver it too; so they hunkered down and waited for help, which never came.  The two adult women cared for and trained their commander’s daughter to shoot and hone her survival techniques over the years.  Much like her father, they were advanced skills she seemed well adapted too. 

  On many occasions, they had attempted to hotwire several abandoned vehicles they found along the roadside, only to find that their operational components had been fried.  The laboratory base was located in the middle of nowhere, and they were blessed to have this logger's camp to call sanctuary.  It was located far off the main roads where no one would know to look and few infected ever wandered into the area.  They soon learned the use of camouflage and nesting in the trees provided the desired advantage of both observation and safety from the afflicted and predatory animals. 

  However, supplies were running low as of late, and they had scouted as far as they could to find a way out of the forest, and were now facing the choice of abandoning this isolated camp and their dangerous prize they protected during the harsh winter months.  It became clear to us that we were all in the same fix.  Stuck here in the backwoods it would take several weeks by foot for us to reach the nearest town to re-supply; and even that would be a dangerous endeavor.  Towns and suburbs were always filled with weepers; which made them dangerous to explore, and actually finding anything of real use was always a gamble.

  We agreed that stumbling across the importance of this artifact could not be ignored.  We had the choice to either bury it and try our luck by fighting our way through unknown territory and hope we found another camp along the way, or get to that lab base to look for the answers that might resolve this outbreak.  All the while, Beatrice kept mostly quiet and only glanced once at the stone remnant, hiding a tiny spark of fascination behind her dull eyes.  I could tell something was spinning in her devious mind.  The old woman was adept and cunning as much as she was unpredictable; and suspected she had knowledge of project VEIL before she had ever stepped foot in Fallhaven.

  It was a long night with our new companions.  They were well aware to keep the noise to a minimum and the windows blacked out so as not to attract any nocturnal creatures.  Even though their vision was handicapped, it was from dusk that the infected were most active.  It was easier for them to sneak up and catch their prey.  Humans not being a species with natural defenses, they utilized primal instinct as a means to an end when left devoid of the raw mental capacity to fashion even the most basic of weapons. 

  The memories of weepers were greatly dulled.  In the control studies performed on diseased patients, they observed those who went full-turn revealed that the transformation of their colorless eyesight was balanced by an increased sense of hearing.  Few if any of them still recognized what a can of food was, but even those lacked the articulate physical skills to open it without due violence by smashing them open on jagged rocks or by using brute force.  Their sense of pain was lessened greatly, which is why it was so difficult to take them down.  They suffered wounds like any person could and would eventually bleed out if left untreated, but it was as if their primal instincts and adrenaline was set into overdrive.

  We were lucky that the virus only turned a small fraction of those infected that ended up to be so dangerously violent.  If that had not been the case, then mankind would have been overrun by a plague of homicidal mammals of every species.  After all these years their numbers had dwindled drastically as those patients who were infirm or docile usually just wasted away either due to starvation or exposure to the elements.  Those Weepers whom had become stalkers were fearsome.  Actually, it was scary to think of what people were truly capable of when beset by rabid insanity.

  Still, precautions had to be made, as any woodland animal that was capable of becoming tainted through a septic infection or consuming of a corpse could eventually transform into a brutal adversary.  Tasha and her companions looked as if they had had their fair share of such encounters.  Even though it took a measure of convincing them to count us as assets instead of a liability, in the end we were glad for crossing paths.

  Though Betty herself, appeared reluctant to reveal her past with the party, we shared our back-stories of how we came to be in the middle of this secluded forest.  For the next few days, we prepared to investigate the base across the valley with the assurance that we could first arrange an excursion to find the few friends we had left at the abandoned hydro power plant.  There was always the chance that they might have moved on; or worse, came looking for us in that underground facility.  In either case, we had to find them and let them know what had happened to us.

  With our current company, the supply of available rations were running thin and were now being used up at twice the rate with out presence.  They had tried hunting before, and their skill with their high tech sniper rifles would make it an easy chore; but there was no guarantee that any game taken down wasn't already tainted with the disease.  Since the outbreak, many survivors had turned to a pure vegetarian palate by growing what they could in gardens to eke out an existence.  Those efforts were limited to their location and time of the season unless they had the means to construct a greenhouse, which was necessary due to the enduring overcast and frequent storms.  The fact was that most canned foods went sour a year or two after their expiration dates; and we were now several times past that length.

  The three mercenary girls had limited luck with fishing in the lake near the mill until infected rodents began to raze their traps.  Diseased beavers being the worst of the culprits, which were critters designed for both land and water, and could chew through anything.  After their fishing nets had been destroyed, it became obvious they were fighting a losing battle.  None of the girls really wanted to risk setting up additional netting in deeper water at the peril of being attacked by the rodents.

  The pressure of our situation urged Beatrice to reveal that there was a small chance the subterranean transit system might be connected to the research facility beyond the collapsed road tunnel.  After suffering several days of her silence on the matter, we began to wonder what else she might have withheld.  As our plans progressed, Tasha, Ava and Kel acknowledged that it would be far safer for us to infiltrate the target base if there was any way to access it through an underground conduit.  With a measure of reluctance, we agreed to revisit the transport system, as our only known access at this point was back where we had left our friends back at the hydro plant.

  At least now, we had new gear and weapons, and the seven of us had a better chance to make the trek.  Kel had already pieced together several map portions seized from their supplies and attached it to ours from the mill.  They had made a crude drawing of their master map that had been lost during a previous encounter.  As their navigator, she had an idea where the power station might be and how to find it.

  When I had initially stumbled upon Thorn and his crew I had just been following the ridge line of the western mountains through the forests, as I had learned it was prudent to avoid open roads and towns unless I happened to be in exceptionally desperate straights at the time.  Thorn and his friends had come up from the south when they had chanced upon that building in ruins as an escape from the wet regional weather and violent electrical storms.  This was fortunate since we believed we were currently stationed far southwest of where that facility might be.

  Beatrice gave us but a few assurances that the tube rail transit worked by a sealed vacuum system and would not allow contaminated people to wander into the tunnels as far as she knew.  Understandably, Tasha and the girls were stunned when we mentioned the enormous mutants that we had seen, but we chose not to comment on the experimentation which had been performed at Fallhaven.  That secret research had been the cause of the particular conflict between the young girl’s father and the research scientist the day before he had disappeared.  She was already aware that something sinister and underhanded was going on long before we had ever met. 

  It was during the first year after this viral blight had hit the public and the exceptionally harsh winter that followed that the world began to fall apart at the seams.  Radical tensions erupted between nations in the midst of the ongoing crisis.  Political conflicts ignited while governments were struggling to gain some kind of control over the rising global dilemma as the plague spread.

  Back in Fallhaven, sitting high on their pedestal, Beatrice and General Kane were privy to classified data, which was crucial information they would do anything to protect from leaking out to the residents.  In such confined environments, knowledge was power, and they did not want to provide the tenants with a reason to revolt.  The vast underground shelters honeycombed throughout the countryside, which had been built long before the actual asteroid impact.  Honestly, it was spooky how quickly the military had responded in a show of brute force to corral citizens under the guise of humanitarian aid.

  People who went into the camps never came out.  They had been pressed into receiving fake inoculations as a cure which had never worked.  All able body citizens were turned into chain gang slave labor to build defenses for the military bunkers while armed uniformed soldiers stood around watching under the pretense of protection.  However, it was those same military guards that readily abandoned the civilians whenever swarms of the infected attacked or merely deserted the civilians in empty camps when they received orders to retreat.  Any real government officials were never actually seen in person except by video while they were asserting their control and offering empty promises to the masses. 

  Now we knew where the elite had all fled too; giving their aired speeches from behind the thick safe walls of exotic shelters like Fallhaven.  The social landscape had been scarred long before Apophis punched a hole in our atmosphere.  Money bought elections while heads of government entertained the public with their mindless banter.  Throughout all the posturing of the authorities, the civilians themselves were only concerned that they would be safe and healthy and try to recover their sanity through these grim times.

  Officials allowed banking cabals to reap financial credits from the public coffers in return for their own slice of the pie.  The corruption was rampant; but unfortunately for them, so was the virus.  It brought the military and government to its knees, and all the while, they were keeping up the masquerade to the very end, that everything was under control; when the reality was they didn't have a clue as to what the fuck they were doing.