Mass Extinction Event: The Complete Fourth Series (Days 54 to 61) (23 page)
Thomas
“I'm here!” I shout, sitting up suddenly as the dream starts to fade.
Looking around, I realize that I'm still in the truck. I parked on the side of the road last night, just so I could sleep for a few hours, but now the sun has risen and I guess I must have been out for several hours. Checking my reflection in the rear-view mirror, I see that I have an imprint of the steering wheel on my forehead.
“Great,” I mutter, taking a look at my injured shoulder. The wound is still open, but parts of it seem to have begun to heal and there's not so much inflammation. Melissa insisted on putting some more gel on it before I left, and the infection has definitely gone down. The pain is a little better too, and I don't feel so hot.
Leaning back, I stare out the windshield for a moment, watching the dusty road ahead.
Finally I try to start the engine again, but it takes several turns before I can get it going. I filled the truck with my last can of gas last night, but I'm already too far from the lake to get back, so I figure I need to keep driving and hope I find a gas station that hasn't been ransacked yet. Easing the truck into gear, I set off again.
(Mass Extinction Event 4.8)
Elizabeth
He runs through the dark forest, desperately trying to get away from the soldiers as rain continues to pour down.
“Stop!” one of them shouts, as a couple more shots are fired.
Ducking as a bullet ricochets off a nearby tree, he stumbles in the mud and then falls, rolling down a steep hill before slamming into the side of a tree, instantly shattering several ribs. Despite the pain, he gets to his feet and keeps running, even as he hears more bullets whipping through the air all around him and hitting the trees. All he can do is try to stay on his feet and hope that he can get far enough ahead.
And then suddenly he feels a bullet slamming into his back.
“Toad!” I shout, sitting up in bed.
Struggling to catch my breath, I look around the room and realize that the light of morning is finally creeping through the window. That dream was so intense, so real, it was almost as if I was right there with him. I reach up and check my pulse, and I find that it's racing. I don't even know when I fell asleep, except that it was a long time after the sun went down. Getting up, I limp over to the mirror and look at my reflection, and for a moment I'm shocked by the fear and pain in my eyes.
“Toad,” I whisper, turning to look at the window. “Where are you?”
***
“You're kidding, right?” Natalie replies as we make our way across the sun-drenched forecourt outside the building. “How the hell do you think
I
can help you get in touch with Mitchfield?”
“There has to be a way,” I tell her, struggling to keep up. “Maybe there's a radio somewhere, or a phone-line that works, or -”
“You're delusional,” she says with a smile. “If you wanna find this guy, you missed your chance last night. He's blatantly dead and that means
you
need to be dead if you're gonna see him again. Wouldn't that be nice, huh? A lovely family reunion in heaven!” She pauses. “Are people allowed to screw around in heaven? I've always wondered that...”
“A helicopter, then.”
She stops and turns to me.
“I have to go back to Mitchfield,” I continue, even though I know that I must sound completely insane. “I have to look for him. I know you probably think I'm nuts, and that's fine, I don't care what you think, but I can't just sit around here and act like I don't care. As long as there's a chance, I need to know!”
“I thought your father told you -”
“I have to find out for myself.”
“You don't trust Daddy?” She smiles. “Okay, this just got interesting.”
“It's not that I don't trust him, it's just -”
“You think he lied to you.”
“I think he has good intentions,” I tell her, choosing my words carefully, “but I think sometimes he goes too far when he's trying to protect me.” I pause for a moment, as my mind races with the possibilities. “I had a dream last night -”
“Oh, a dream!” she says, clearly amused by what I'm telling her. “Well that changes everything, doesn't it? 'Cause dreams aren't just random shit that burst into your head when you're asleep, oh no, they're flashes of truth and inspiration, sent by angels and implanted straight into your mind so they can inspire you.” She turns and starts walking away. “Loser.”
“Slow down,” I mutter, trying to keep up with her.
“It's not my fault you can't walk properly.”
“Don't you get it?” I ask. “I really think Toad might still be alive. Isn't there anyone
you
wish you could see again?”
“Tons of people.”
“And if you thought there was a chance, even if it was small, wouldn't you do anything within your power to try? Especially if you thought someone had been lying to you about it, wouldn't you try to find out the truth?”
“So what do you want to do?” she asks, leading me around the side of one of the buildings. “You wanna, what, commandeer a helicopter? Steal it and fly yourself down to Mitchfield?”
“Of course not,” I reply, realizing that I need to be a little more realistic. “I'm not saying I have to go there in person, I just need to get in touch with General Patterson so I can ask him a few questions.”
“You want him to tell you if your boyfriend is still alive?”
“There's also a baby involved.”
“Say that again?”
“A baby,” I continue. “She's only a few weeks old.”
“You kept that quiet,” she replies, glancing down at my belly, “although I
did
think I spotted a hint of a bulge. You got loose skin?”
“She's not mine!” I tell her. “She's someone else's!”
“Cool. So you kidnapped a baby?”
“Her mother died. Her name's Rachel and when we left Mitchfield, they were going to take care of her, but now I'm starting to worry. The whole situation just doesn't feel right!”
She pauses, and I can tell that somehow I've finally managed to break through her barrier of snark, and she's actually giving the matter some thought.
“You admitted there are people you wish you could see again,” I continue. “So you understand how I feel, right?”
She stares at me.
“You do...” I continue. “
Don't
you?”
“When I said there are tons of people I wish I could see again,” she replies finally, “I was being sarcastic. Could you not tell that from my tone of voice?”
“But -”
“There is
one
life-form that I miss from the old days,” she continues, “just one, and that is my dog. He was a Labrador, his name was Benedict.” She holds out her arm, so that I can see her tattoo again. “If I could get him back in exchange for the rest of you people fucking off, I would do it in a heartbeat. Seriously, I could survive quite happily, just me and Benedict on our own. And if that sounds sad or weird, or like the plot for some particularly cheesy movie, then so be it.” She pauses for a moment. “I'd steal a helicopter and fly down to Mitchfield or wherever if I thought it meant I could get Benedict back, so yeah, I kinda, sorta understand where you're coming from. But for some guy? Hell, no. There are guys here, Lizzie. If you're getting lonely at night, it's really not too hard to find someone who'll put his arms around you. Or
her
arms, if you prefer that sort of thing. Or
their
arms, if you're particularly adventurous.”
“One radio,” I reply, trying to ignore her attempts to distract me. “That's all I need. Are you seriously telling me that in this whole city, you don't know where I can find one working radio?”
***
“They'll notice the signal,” she says a short while later, as she pulls the sheets off a bulky computer that looks like it's several decades old. “I'm not even kidding, they'll pick it up and they'll come looking. You've got maybe two minutes and then you have to turn it off, okay?”
“I need a little longer.”
“Tough. Two minutes, bitch.” She starts plugging various wires into a battery under the table. We're in some kind of old office building, and although the place looks like it was ransacked long ago, Natalie seems to have her own little hideaway here in one of the side-rooms. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to keep this hidden,” she mutters. “Obviously the internet's down, but there's an emergency military net that allows for communication between key nodes. Do you know anything about computers, Lizzie?”
“Nothing very technical.”
“Huh. Well, this system works by displacing the subatomic wavelengths of the initial signal, converting it into anti-matter vapor, and then dispersing it via various meta-organic node stabilizers that route the whole thing through a set of converters that use dark matter tachyons to re-engineer a dilithium pulse upstream from the original broadcaster.”
“I said I don't know much about computers,” I reply with a fake smile, “not that I'm a complete idiot. You made all that stuff up. Half of it sounded like something Spock would say.”
“Of course I made it up,” she replies, hitting a button on the front of the machine, causing it to start powering up. “I was serious about the time limits, though. The network has various dormant systems that cycle on and off the grid for short periods, and that's completely normal. They never last for more than a couple of minutes, though, so you can only hide among the noise for that long. After that, people are gonna come and confiscate the machine once they know it exists, and I really don't want that happening, okay?”
“Okay.”
“But you can try again later, albeit only in two-minute bursts. Got it?”
“Got it:”
“I don't even know why I'm doing this,” she continues, entering her user-name and password.
“Because deep down you're a nice person?”
“Don't say things like that, it makes my skin crawl.” She brings up a program and moves the cursor onto a green panel. “Once I hit this, you have two minutes to find the contact details for whoever you want to speak to at Mitchfield, and then you can try to speak to him. I mean, the odds of him answering are pretty low, but that's not my problem, you can just leave a text message and later you can check to see if he's responded. After two minutes, I
will
pull the plug, so whatever you wanna know, find it out fast, and for God's sake don't let on that you're making an unauthorized broadcast. I don't want someone reporting us for this.”
“I promise,” I reply. “Don't worry, General Patterson seemed like an okay kind of guy.”
“You ready?”
I nod.
She hits a button on the mouse. “Two minutes. Go.”
“How do I do this?”
Sighing, she grabs the mouse and opens several folders, finally finding one titled Mitchfield and opening it to reveal a list of names.
“These are all the personnel at Mitchfield,” she explains, speaking much faster than usual. “Double-click on one and the system will attempt to connect you.”
Scrolling through the names, I finally find General Patterson and double-click, only to be shown an error message.
“Huh,” Natalie mutters, grabbing the mouse and trying again, only to get the same message.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
“I'm not sure.” She tries a couple of other names, but the same thing happens, and then she changes to a different folder and tries another list. Still having no luck, she tries yet another folder. “I'm gonna run a trace,” she explains, “and see whether I can find another way to locate their main server. So far, it's not looking like it's online, but there's always a back-up somewhere, I just have to work out where in the -”
Before she can finish, a message flashes up, saying something about a ping not being received.
“What the hell?” she whispers, pausing for a moment. She hits a few more buttons, but it's clear that she's not getting the response she expected from the system.
“What's wrong?” I ask. “Natalie? Can we talk to someone at Mitchfield or not?”
“We can't,” she replies, clearly shocked by something. “Mitchfield's gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it's not there anymore.” She pauses again, before shutting the computer down.
“You said they might not answer,” I reply. “Can't we try again later? Eventually someone has to reply.”
“That's not the problem,” she continues, staring at the computer for a moment before turning to me. “The whole base at Mitchfield has been completely removed from the grid. It's almost like it doesn't exist anymore. If it was just a power-cut, the error message would be different. The whole place is gone.”
As those words leave her lips, we both look over at the window, just in time to spot three helicopters coming in low and heading over to land on one of the other buildings.
Thomas
“No!” I shout, banging my fist against the dashboard. “What the hell's wrong with you?”
The truck splutters as it continues to coast along the bumpy road, until finally it comes to a halt. Checking the fuel gauge, I see that it's reading as empty, but that's impossible since I filled it up just twelve hours ago. Opening the door, I climb out and walk around the vehicle until I reach the rear, at which point I realize that there's a trail of gasoline running back along the road.
The tank must have sprung a leak.
Climbing onto the back of the truck, I start sorting through what's left of my supplies, but finally I realize that I'm completely out. For a moment, I can't quite accept the truth, but finally I realize that I'm stranded. The truck can't move another inch right now, and I have no idea where I can find another gas station.
Making my way back down onto the tarmac, I take a moment to look around. I'm on the outskirts of a small town, but the place looks to be completely deserted. Figuring that there must be a gas station somewhere, I grab an empty canister and head off to take a look, walking past a faded, rusty old sign:
Welcome to Carmichael!