Point Apocalypse (4 page)

"So Mark, what is it-"
Wladas started.

Lightning flashed between the antennas. A deafening clap ripped through the air. I covered my ears and ducked. Many of the people fell onto the pier covering their heads.

The sailors seemed to be quite used to the local thunder and lightning. They'd finally managed to place the container onto the landing ramp. The crane operator prodded a lever unhooking the wire cables that held the container in place under the boom of the crane. Slowly, it slid down the slipway toward a square opening in the Fort's wall.

The corporal watching the crew from the bridge turned on his jetpack and shot skywa
rd. He made a steep arc through the air heading for the gate we'd just left. Three guards waited there for him. The corporal landed and motioned them to begin. All three turned their backs to the gate and trained their weapons on us. A harsh voice spouted from concealed loudspeakers,

"Prisoners! You have broken the Earth's laws and are banished for good! There is no going back! There is no forgiveness! From now on, you're deportees!"

His voice grew louder and more powerful. Now it echoed over the island, deafening and hair-raising, bringing one to his knees. "The Earth's laws end here! Within the limits of the prison world, your life span is your own responsibility!"

As he spoke, the Feds were retreating into the gate, their weapons still pointed at us. The loudspeakers concluded in a lower voice,

"The jumpgate base and the island are Earth's territory. All prisoners have two minutes to clear it. In case of noncompliance, the Fort will engage its weapons systems."

With this last word, the
armored gateway closed concealing the Feds. The square opening in the Fort's wall opposite the ferry shut, and the slipway retracted. The sailors rushed to cast off; the operator lowered the crane and began covering the hoist with tarps.

The fat bald guy - who seemed to be the captain - hurried inside the cockpit and emerged a few seconds later wearing a lifejacket. He raised a polished megaphone and shouted,

"Need a special invitation? In the cage, quickly! By the left, single file, quick march!"

Several round
embrasures opened in the Fort's wall. I rushed toward the gangway, Wladas and the miner wheezing close behind. The rest of the deportees also jostled toward the ferry. The pier resounded with their howling.

"You idiots!" the captain yelled. "In single file!"

The crane operator, having covered the hoist, sprang to a low concrete stand nearby, jerked the lid open and produced a machine gun: an ancient German MG with its holed barrel shroud and wide-mouthed flash suppressor. The crane operator flung a leather strap over his head and hung the weapon at his thigh. He placed the gun barrel onto the railing, straightened the ammunition belt and drew the bolt.

"Halt!" the captain yelled from the bridge.

Lightning flashed. Another clap of thunder tore through my ears. I stopped in front of the gangway.

"Form ranks!" he commanded. "At the double!"

All over the pier, people started pushing and swearing.

"Do it, Georgie," the captain said without lowering the megaphone.

The machine gun rattled, sending a semicircle of hissing bullets ripping through the air overhead. Somebody screamed and collapsed onto the pier. Some rushed back to the shore, others froze. The thick dark barrels of weapon systems emerged from the round embrasures in the walls. The characteristic flattened ends of the barrels blackened with soot told me what they were. Flame throwers.

"Listen here!" the captain shouted. "You have ten seconds to fall in. The last ones will get a bullet. Ten, nine-"

He gave the crane operator's shoulder a shove pointing to an inmate who, despite the orders, had bolted along the pier back toward the base gate. The gun barrel traced the escapee and cut him down in one long spurt.

"Start moving on my command," the captain said matter-of-factly. "Three, two, one! Towa
rd the cage, at the double!"

I took the gangway in three long bounds and dived into the cage's opening.

"Step it up!" the captain hollered. "And don't you dare puke on my deck!"

I strode to the bow side of the gate and rested my hands on the bars watching a fair-haired sailor cast off. In one practiced motion, he released the dock line from a bollard, threw the line into the water and turned round showing a young freckled face.

"Hey, Oakum!" the captain yelled in a strained, breaking voice. "Quit shirking! To the engine room, now!"

The youth chose not to walk back past the cage, apparently for fear of someone pushing him into the water or grabbing him through the bars. He unlatched a hatch under his feet and before I could call him, jumped down into the opening. The hatch closed with a clang and I looked up.

The whole scene must have taken a minute and a half. The barrels of the flame throwers moved forward all at once aiming at the pier. Most of the deportees had already boarded the ferry. The rest faltered on the pier, anxiously waiting their turn. Inside the cage, Wladas elbowed through the crowd toward me. He nodded at the murky gray mist thickening high above the island. Slowly, it formed an enormous conical thunder cloud.

"What's going on?"

"A hurricane, probably," I nodded at the antennas. "The blast wave. Has to be, for sure. The jump takes too much energy disrupting the status quo and causing perturbations. The residual effect of transporting us to Pangea."

Wladas
nodded. During jumps, the antennas worked like lightning rods redirecting surplus energy into the Pangean atmosphere. But the atmosphere had its own ways of dealing with this phenomenon.

Looked like our army school geek had been right about the future catastrophe, albeit a local one.

When the last deportee had entered the cage, the sailors hooked up the gangway with barge poles and dragged it onto the bridge. More sliding bars blocked the exit onto the deck. The cloud over the base thickened, heavy as lead.

"Full speed astern!" the captain barked.

The deck shook and the ferry wallowed as it moved between the pier and the Fort wall. The antennas emitted bolts of lightning, bathing everything in their colored blaze. The sky rumbled.

A guard boat came into view abeam: a squat vessel with square deck houses. It headed for the Elephant Ridge: a much shallower area than here, flooded with daylight, its horizon dotted with
trawlers' sails...

The Elephant Ridge? Was I supposed to know that? Or was it Information defusing in my head again? I was a bit fed up with its nonsense. I'd get to the mainland first, and then I'd try and give it
all a good think.

The anxious deportees argued and quibbled. Some squatted down, others stood holding onto the bars. I headed towa
rd a tight bulkhead at the back part of the cage and stood under it. Wladas forced his way through behind me.

Soon the ferry caught up with the guards' boat and followed in its wake. Lightning flashed over the island although not as often. Still, the sky remained dark.

The guards' boat started to turn, the ferry mimicking its maneuver. On the bridge, an alarm wailed, and another one answered from the guards' boat. The deck swayed sending me sprawling onto Wladas. We collapsed. Everybody screamed. The ferry kept turning without slowing down.

When it turned its stern towa
rd the island, a tornado swirled over the antennas, its funnel flashing occasional bolts of lightning. The leaden sky was pressing down on it as if trying to flatten it and crush it into the Fort. The thunder clapped and crackled; then sunrays ripped the top of the funnel and pounced through the thick darkness illuminating the pier and the Fort's gray walls. A tall rumbling wave concealed it from view.

It rolled on quickly, but I managed to take a deep breath and cover my face. The deck lurched. Water poured through the cage bars.

Chapter Three

Questions

C
olored circles flashed before my closed eyelids. My lungs burned, about to explode. I pushed with my elbows struggling to force myself free from a stranger gripping my back.

I couldn't. I could barely tell top from bottom as I kept hitting and kicking. Pointless. The bulk of the water around me absorbed the impact.

My fingers brushed the bars. I grabbed at them, pushing myself up, and started climbing up toward the light, hoping that the inmate who clung to me would loosen his grip once we were out of the water.

When we surfaced, his fingers at
my throat slackened. I took a swing and elbowed his temple. His nails scratched the skin on my neck as he went underwater.

Every second could be my last, the thought pulsated in my head. I climbed further up, higher, as
far from the water as possible.

Once I
’d climbed about six foot up, I forced my hand between the bars and gripped them tightly, pressing my side to the grate. No one was going to pull me away from it. I'd make a quick job of anyone who tried.

Turned out, I wasn't the only clever one. About a dozen more people,
Wladas included, hung along the perimeter of the cage clinging to the bars. The deck was now to our left and the ceiling to our right. The ferry had to be lying on its side... sinking.

Below in the water, people struggled and screamed, calling for help and drowning each other.

I looked around. I had to get out of there. The ferry was about to become a mass grave.

"
Over here! Help!" voices came from my right.

I turned my head to the bars. The guard boat rocked on the waves nearby, heading for the island. The deck was empty.

"Hey!"

"Come here!"

"Help!"

Our screams followed the boat. Apparently, no one was going to help us. They weren't interested.

Someone tugged my ankle. A gentle pull - not an attempt to grab my foot and drag me down. Someone was trying to get my attention. I looked down, prepared to kick a wet face, but reconsidered. Hanging below me was a Chinese. He looked like the one who'd just lost his buddy in the airlock. He pointed down, nodding.

What the hell?

"Why down?" I asked.

The Chinese started climbing down.

"Where are you-"

"Mark!"
Wladas called.

I turned my head.

"Jump!"

The guard boat slowed down, the feathered waves in its w
ake settling. The turret on the stern turned its twin guns toward the sinking ferry.

I let go of the bars and kicked myself away and down.

What's better, the hydrodynamic shock or being showered with shrapnel? It depended on the gunners' aim, and I had a funny feeling they were about to target the emerging part of the ferry. Otherwise, the Chinese wouldn't have-

The bang came from the ferry's
bow. It felt as if someone had put me into a barrel filled with water, covered the lid and started pounding it with a sledge hammer.

I surfaced, mouth wide open, trying not to scream
from the earache. I nearly hit the Chinese when he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me in the direction of what seemed to be a gap in the grating. The explosion had bent the torn and twisted bars inward. On the foredeck, water gushed in amid billowing smoke and fire.

"
Wladas!" I snorted and shook off the Asian's hand. "Where are you?"

The Asian pushed away a dead body drifting towa
rd us and dived down. Lots of bodies around. And blood. The water was dark with it.

"
Wladas!"

"I'm here-" the neurotech choked.

I made a stroke toward the gap and looked up. The bars drew closer. The ferry was about to go down hook, line and sinker.

If we wanted to stay alive, we had to get out as quickly as possible.

"I'm here! He-help!"

Wladas
' head disappeared under water within a meter from the gap. A disheveled burly man held him down and grabbed at the bars, pushing himself up. The Asian resurfaced nearby and grabbed his feet. Before the burly man had time to react, the Asian climbed his shoulders and locked his hands under the man's chin. Then he kicked hard at the man's shoulders, straightening his legs like a deadlifter.

Vertebrae crunched, and the dead man collapsed on top of me. I recoiled. The Asian
dived into the gap, and Wladas showed his head again.

"Out!" I gasped. "Quick!"

I looked back. A few more men swam toward us, including the miner who'd fathered the cloned triplets.

By the time I looked back, the neurotech had already escaped. The gap was now halfway
in the water, sinking. Or should I say, the entire ferry was sinking. Quite rapidly, too.

I took a deep breath and d
ived in, praying that no one else would catch up with me and grab my foot hoping to survive. Either that, or I could go face first onto a jagged bar. Or just miss the opening.