Extinction (35 page)

As she climbed higher and higher, she barely noticed the cold wind that whipped at her and threatened to rip her off the rock wall; she was unaware when the first signs of frostbite started to attack her shredded fingertips. All she could see was the wall, disappearing beneath her as she devoured it step by step.

Jack
, she repeated in her head like a mantra.
Jack
.

Before she realized what she had done she was at the top, pulling herself onto the rocky precipice.

She paused only momentarily to get her breath, her mind focused entirely now on getting to the base. Getting to Jack. Together, she was sure they could stop this thing.

Keeping low, she crept along the grass of the cliff top towards the seven-foot-high barbed-wire fence. The radar array was directly on the other side. She looked at her watch again; less than ten minutes to go.

She checked that her pistol was secure in her belt and raced towards the fence; there was no time for anything more subtle. She leapt high as she reached it, hands reaching out for the top. She grasped the barbed wire, ignoring the pain which shot through her cold-numbed hands, and pulled herself up and over.

The barbs caught in her stomach as she pulled herself across, cutting through her jacket and lacerating her flesh. One of the barbs caught deeply, and she moaned, pushing herself back to free it, blood running down into her trousers as she dropped heavily to the ground on the other side, her hands ripped to shreds.

Undeterred, she moved on, legs pumping as she skirted the inner wire fences of the huge radars, heading for the site’s main control room.

She could make out roving patrols of guards, and kept close to the shadows to avoid them. If they had night-vision goggles, her tactics might still be foiled, but none of the guards seemed interested in looking in her direction. They would have been briefed that the cliff-side area was impassable, and would keep their attention focused on the other side.

As she moved down past the rows of giant radars, she felt the ground shake as a powerful humming sound started to emanate from the array.

She increased her pace, her head down low, watching with horror as the vanes at the tops of the radar posts started to buzz with electricity.
No
, she thought.
Please no
.

Sounds of gunfire erupted from over the hill, towards the central control room at the front entrance. Glad that some of the good guys were still alive at least, she watched as the remaining guards moved to help their comrades, and took her chance, sprinting the remaining distance to the now unprotected cabin that housed the radar array’s command centre.

She had to step over a mangled, dead body on her way in and paused for a moment, shocked as she recognized Colonel Anderson, half of his face blown away. But where was Jack? Had he managed to escape? Had he made it inside, only to be killed?

Pulling Tomkin’s pistol from her belt, her frozen, ripped hands struggling to get a grip on it, she threw the doors open and entered the nerve centre.

I
N FRONT OF
her lay the complex machinery of the radar array’s control room, completely empty except for dead bodies. She gasped as she recognized Niall Breisner and Martin King among them.

Then a door opened at the far end and a man came through.

Their eyes met, and in that split second the man began to raise his assault rifle. But Alyssa’s gun was already up, and she fired once, twice, hitting the soldier in the chest; she watched in horror as he slumped to the floor, knowing he was dead.

She had never killed anyone before, but she knew she had to quell the feelings of sick, fierce guilt that burned through her; there was no time for it.

She raced for the door the man had come through and pulled it open, wondering where it led, and if anyone had heard the shots. As she pushed through the doorway, she noticed it was a small room, like a pressure chamber. And, like a pressure chamber, there was a hatch in the floor.

She bent down and hauled the hatch open. An access tunnel, with a ladder attached to its side, descended deep into the bowels of the earth. Outside, she heard the hum and vibration as more and more radar units powered up. Steeling herself, she entered the vertical tunnel, knowing it might be the last thing she ever did.

A
T THE BOTTOM
of the ladder Alyssa paused, breathing hard, one bleeding hand gripped round her gun, the other on the handle of the lower access hatch.

Summoning all her self-control, all of her considerable willpower, she pulled the door open and strode out into the brightly lit room, pistol raised in front of her.

The room was large, much like a nuclear bunker hidden deep underground. She ignored the people around the room, her eyes fixed on the man behind the computer console.

She recognized him from the television: Oswald Umbebe, the high priest of the OPR. If she could kill him, there might still be a chance.

Maybe Jack was still alive somewhere in the grounds, and when this whole thing was finished, he would be found and saved. But for now, Alyssa could only see Umbebe.

The large, impressive man turned in his chair to look at her, and for a moment she was frozen by the look of utter calm in his eyes. It was the look of a man who knew he couldn’t be stopped.

And then she noticed a shadow move on the tiled floor beside her feet, and knew with a sickening feeling that someone was standing right behind her.

‘J
ACK!
’ A
LYSSA CRIED.
‘You’re OK!’ She opened her arms, so happy to see him in one piece that she all but forgot about Umbebe sitting in the chair behind her, hands on the controls of Spectrum Nine. How had Jack done it? But it didn’t matter, he was here, and together they could—

She froze. Jack was holding a gun and he was pointing it at her. ‘Jack?’

‘Alyssa. . .’ he said softly, almost regretfully, and, although his eyes looked sad, the gun never wavered from her chest.

‘Jack works for me,’ Umbebe’s deep baritone broke in from behind, and Alyssa’s head snapped towards him, disbelief across her face.

‘You’re a liar!’ she screamed at him, her own gun raised once more. ‘Tell me he’s wrong,’ she said to Jack pleadingly.

‘Tell her, Jack,’ the deep voice commanded.

‘Drop the gun, Alyssa,’ he said sadly. ‘It’s true.’

‘Jack,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t understand. . .’

‘I work for Umbebe,’ Jack said. ‘I’m a believer.’

Alyssa’s mind seemed to buckle, along with her body.

‘I’ve been with Oswald since I was a boy,’ Jack explained. ‘My parents died, I had nothing, I was bounced from one orphange to another. Then he found me, took me in, gave me a home, taught me about the world, the universe. What he says, what the order believes in – what
I
believe in – it’s true.’

‘But why did you help me?’ Alyssa asked, so bewildered she did not notice the bustling activity in the operations room around her.

‘What choice did I have?’ Jack responded. ‘I’d been in place for years, feeding Oswald information. I’d found out about Spectrum Nine when it was still in its infancy, and Oswald saw the potential right away.’ He shook his head. ‘I was supposed to be here when the attack took place, help them by sabotaging the security systems. It was only sheer chance that I ended up back here anyway.’ Jack smiled wryly. ‘Anderson brought me here himself, and he never realized that instead of helping, I was feeding information to the order.

‘I was also supposed to get the access codes from the secure computers here. But when Anderson saw me with you, the plan changed. I had to escape with you, or else I might have been killed, and then I couldn’t have helped at all. After we split up, when we escaped from the motel, I managed to let Oswald know what was happening, and he told me to keep trying to get the codes. But I’d already decided to do that anyway.’

‘Is that why you came to meet me in the station café?’ Alyssa asked.

‘Yes,’ Jack replied levelly. ‘I knew you had information from the base on that flash drive, and I wanted to see if the codes were on there. But that wasn’t the only reason. I know you won’t believe me, but I wanted to see you again. I knew the world was going to be destroyed anyway, and I wanted to spend my last few hours with you.’

Alyssa tried to ignore this last statement. ‘So you weren’t trying to get the information out to the media at all?’

Jack shook his head. ‘No, I was never trying to get the information out, I just wanted the codes. As it happens, the codes weren’t on the disk anyway. That’s why I came up with the plan to break into the DoD.’

‘But what were the chances of that being successful?’ Alyssa asked. ‘We did it, but the odds were against us. What if you hadn’t got the codes?’

‘The back-up plan was for Oswald’s men to torture Breisner and King until they gave them up,’ Jack said. ‘But that would have taken time so it was never the preferred method. Oswald would have found a way to work the system one way or another. My way was just a lot cleaner. And besides, it was worth risking my life for. We’re all going to die anyway, remember?’

‘Why didn’t you just meet up with Umbebe and join the team? Get the codes here at the base like you’d originally planned?’

‘Oswald had already left; he was with the assault team up here where they were making their final preparations. I’d spent too long escaping from up here, and it would have taken forever to get back. And with everyone looking for me, there was no way I could have travelled by plane. And I meant what I said earlier,’ he said seriously. ‘I wanted to spend my last few hours with you.’

Alyssa shook her head. ‘But you were never helping me to get evidence.’

‘No,’ Jack admitted. ‘I hacked into Tomkin’s computer to get the codes for Spectrum Nine. But I knew you wouldn’t have long to live anyway, so I thought I may as well let you have the evidence, at least give you hope in your final hours.’ He paused, looked straight into her eyes. ‘You mean a lot to me.’

Alyssa’s mind spun. Who was this man in front of her? Not the man she’d thought he was, that much was certain, and the betrayal hit her like a spike through her heart. And yet, under the pressure of the chase, when their lives were at stake, she had genuinely felt that Jack loved her; she had felt it.

‘Jack,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t let him do this. This isn’t you. He’s manipulated you, used you, don’t you see? We can’t let the world end this way. Who are we to decide?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not we who decide. It’s the universe itself. It’s written in the stars, Alyssa, don’t you understand? It’s inevitable.’

‘He’s right,’ Umbebe’s voice boomed. ‘The codes have been inputted, and there is no time left. It’s all over. Embrace it, Ms Durham. It is our destiny.’

‘It doesn’t have to be,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on Jack, her mind made up. It was the only thing left that she could do. ‘Please don’t try and stop me.’

‘No!’ Jack said as she turned and raised her gun towards Umbebe.

Alyssa saw the look of surprise on Umbebe’s face as the barrel tracked towards his face.

‘Damn it, Alyssa, don’t do it!’ Jack shouted.

Umbebe’s hands came up in front of him in an instinctive gesture of protection, but Alyssa didn’t hesitate. Her finger depressed the trigger of Tomkin’s gun, and three shots hit Umbebe in the stomach, shaking him violently in his chair. His eyes went wide with shock and pain and, even more terribly, the fear of defeat and failure – before closing in death.

But Alyssa never saw the eyes close, and would never know what would happen to the world, as Jack unloaded his pistol into the back of her head, his anguished cries the last thing she ever heard.

J
ACK SAGGED, THE
impact of the last thirty seconds overwhelming him. He stared at Alyssa’s dead body on the floor, blood spilling across the tiles.

The truth was, he really had loved her, the first time he had genuinely felt the emotion for another human being; at least since his father, who had first taught him about the nature and purpose of life and death.

But he loved the planet more, and in his heart of hearts he knew Umbebe was right. The maths, the science, it was all perfect; the earth was due to be cleansed according to the great cosmic programme, and only human technology stood in its way. Flood warning systems, early earthquake detection, weapons which could knock incoming meteorites out of their trajectory with the earth – what chance did nature have? And so it was
right
, so absolutely
right
, to have the earth’s ritual cleansing brought about by the same technology that was protecting it from natural destruction.

Umbebe’s plan had been perfect. It was just a shame Alyssa had had to become involved, a shame he had let his feelings develop the way they had.

Jack walked forward, stepping over Alyssa’s body. He bent towards Umbebe and pulled him out of his chair, toppling him to the floor next to Alyssa.

His mentor had wanted to initiate the destruction of the earth, but his chance had gone.

Jack sat down in the chair and cracked his fingers. He would just have to do it himself.

J
AMES
R
USHTON FELT
the ground shaking beneath him.

For hours now, he had heard the constant blare of car engines, horns and sirens in the streets outside. He had seen the people who worked in this building fleeing across the plaza, though nobody ever came to unlock his cell door.

And so he felt the tremors, and watched through his cell window as buildings started to fall, and the entire plaza disappeared into a giant crater as the earth ate it up whole.

He had only seconds to register the fact that he was witnessing one of the most powerful earthquakes the world had ever seen, titanic forces of nature wreaking utter destruction.

And he watched in mute fascination as the walls of his own cell collapsed, the floor giving way just as the ceiling above him disintegrated and his body was lost forever amidst three million tons of rubble.

It was what he deserved, John Jeffries realized as he stared out across the wide city boulevard. He and his colleagues had meddled with powers they shouldn’t have, and this was the result.