Society: After It Happened Book 3 (14 page)

AFTER ACTION REPORT

Leah’s convoy made it back in the afternoon.  She had called home on the radio ten miles out, reporting a successful trip and a contact.  Dan snatched the radio from Jack and asked for details, the nervous strain evident in his voice.  Leah assured him that they were all fine and that she would give him a full report as soon as they were back.

She rolled down the drive and up to the front of the house to find Dan stood outside with Ash at his heel.  The lorries peeled off to the stores shutters as she pulled up and reverse parked next to Dan’s Discovery.

She readied herself to weather the storm of his questions, to account for the failings she had repeatedly cursed herself for on the return journey.  She climbed down and saw him striding towards her with a taught look on his face.  He didn’t stop when he got to her, but carried on and threw his arms around her picking her up easily.  He held her tightly and breathed hard, relief washing over him.  She fought out of his grip until he put her down.

“Air!” she gasped theatrically.

“Are you ok?” he asked, full of concern.

“I’m fine” she said “Coffee?”

They went inside and Dan poured a coffee for them each.  They sat at the table where she began to strip down her carbine just as Rich came in.  He took the weapon from her.

“I’ll clean that.  You two talk” he said kindly and went leave the room.  Leah stopped him and threw him the keys to her Defender. 

“Recovered some weapons on the front seat; they’re in bad shape I think” she said.

“From the beginning” Dan said, more calm now.

“Got there fine, cleared two buildings and I got up high to keep watch” she paused, sipping the hot liquid.

“I thought I could hear noises – engine noises – but saw nothing.  I cleared the third building after leaving a lookout and Jimmy fired a shot to get me back outside.  Six men on motorbikes, not friendly” she stopped again, cooling the coffee by blowing over the lip of the cup.

“And?” Dan said, impatience creeping into his voice.

“I had the angle on them” she said, demonstrating the oblique lines with her hands “and they drew on Jimmy after refusing to let us go.  They didn’t know I was there and they all went down.  The others cleared the last building and we came home”

So matter of fact.  So emotionless. 

Dan didn’t know whether to be impressed with her cool or worried that she was a psychopath.

“Go on” he said.

“Bursts into each one.  The last one I hit had taken one high in the chest from Jimmy’s Remington.  He had twenty-six stick men drawn on his bike.  Some were women and some were smaller than the others…” she trailed off.

Dan knew exactly what that meant, and strongly suspected that she did too.

“Any others?” he asked, getting back to business.

“No.  I got back up high and saw nobody else.  I put in two ambushes on the way home and didn’t see a thing”

She had done well.  Very well, he thought.

“You stayed after the contact to clear more supplies?” he asked, finally clicking with what she had said earlier.

“Yes.  The others were in a panic and I thought that giving them a job to do would settle their nerves and they were less likely to crash on the way home”

Dan could see the logic in that, but even he wasn’t sure if he had the guts to make that decision.  The instinct to clear out of the area following a contact was so strong and ingrained that he knew his thought processes were different from hers on the subject.  He regarded her as she loosened and removed her vest before picking up her coffee again.

Dan sighed.  “Ok, get a shower and see Marie please”

The lazy sketch of a salute again, and her personality broke through the curtain of his stress.  She had been weighed and measured; and she had not been found wanting.

She transferred her Walther to the hip holster she wore when of duty and stowed the rest of her gear as Dan drank his coffee before she left to clean up.

Hearing her leave, Rich emerged from Dan’s old bedroom and came to sit with him.

“Well?” he asked.

Dan sighed again and looked to the ceiling, tilting his head back and rubbing his face.

“She took out six armed men who, I reckon, were quite accustomed to violence.  You tell me”

“That’s our girl” Rich said, smiling.

~

“How do you feel about it now?” Marie asked, leaning forward slightly in her chair.

Leah shrugged.

“Fine.  I had to do it, or the five of us would probably be dead by now and the supplies wouldn’t be here” she replied.  She wanted to say that she wasn’t uncaring about it; she knew she had killed people which is fundamentally wrong but it was either them or her.  There was no simpler way to explain it.

“If they were friendly I wouldn’t have done it, you know that right?” she asked Marie, mimicking her posture in the chair.

“Yes, I know that” Marie answered with a soft smile “I just want to be sure that you know that”

“Well, yeah.  Obviously.  I know you all think I’m cold about it, but it’s us or them; I chose us.  Honestly, I think Jimmy needs you more than I do right now”

“Ok, but promise me you’ll come to me to talk about any feelings you have about it?” Marie said.

“I promise.  I’m fine about it; it’s just one of those things that happens now”

Leah helped herself to another biscuit as she got up to leave.  She had skipped the shower, and decided on going for a run.  She put on shorts and a t-shirt, tying the waistband tight to hold the holstered Walther inside by the small of her back.  She laced her trainers tight and went back downstairs, poking her head into Ops where Dan still sat.

“That dog of yours need a run?” she asked.

“Yes” Dan replied “He’s keeps farting and it smells like a dead badger; by all means take him!” he never minded letting Ash go with her as he felt better that she had backup even though she wouldn’t leave the immediate area.

“You carrying?” he asked as she patted her legs for Ash’s attention.

In response she turned and showed him her back without a word.  Dan nodded at her.

“Go on then, stinky…” he said as his dog went to her with his tail wagging.

“…and you Ash” he finished, as she knew he would say.

She ran across the fields to the gardens, Ash loping by her side but still looking up at her expectantly.  She stopped at the road and looked both ways, surprising herself at the ridiculous gesture deeply ingrained into her mind. 

After a mile she had to stop and wait for his ridiculous ritual of sniffing desperately before returning to the first spot to deliver his payload.  He scratched all four feet backwards in turn, digging at the ground before bounding after her with renewed energy at his immediate weight loss.  She set a brisk pace, making her breathe hard as she ran.  Ash kept up effortlessly, still hoping for a treat of some description.

She stopped after a few miles of cross country circuits to catch her breath.  She worried herself a little bit if she was honest; why wasn’t she affected by killing people? Would everyone be happier if she burst into tears and wept for the loss of life at her hands? 

No, she decided.  She wouldn’t fake emotions just for other people to feel happier, and if she was to take control in the future then she must be strong.  That, she knew she wasn’t faking.  She was strong.  She wasn’t upset about killing those men, but then again she didn’t enjoy it either.  It was a task.  A job.  It needed doing and she did it.

Which is exactly what she would always do to keep these people safe.

She started to run again, taking a long route back to the house she set a faster pace, pushing herself. 

EAT, SLEEP, TEST, REPEAT

Emma’s eyes were dry.  The air conditioned atmosphere in the bunker was something that she had forgotten, but now the memory of how it made her feel ill flooded back.  She was tired, she needed fresh air and sunlight.

She made herself a drink and took it outside into the blustery Scottish summer evening.  The wind blew hard against her, making her wrap the fleece around her body.  She let the cool air blow away the claustrophobia.  So far she had tested almost every blood sample she had.  Other than finding some unrelated differences, likely congenital issues which had nothing to do with the virus or whatever it was, there was no difference.  She had yet to isolate exactly what it was, but she found nothing in the samples of those who had died in front of her.

As she stood and enjoyed the breeze, the undeniable realisation became more and more clear.  There had to be something, otherwise everyone would still be alive and life would be normal.  Logically then, the fact that each sample showed no difference must mean that each sample was relatively the same.  That meant, that every sample of blood she had tested was exposed to the same infection. 

“We all have it” she said out loud to herself.

Nobody answered, as she knew they wouldn’t.  She lacked the knowledge or the equipment to test DNA, so couldn’t even begin to isolate any possible reasons why the survivors were immune.

She had drawn a blank.  As far as she could tell, everyone was exposed to ‘it’ but some just survived where most others didn’t.  Exasperated, she threw the remaining half of her drink into the grass and went back inside.  She wandered into the lab and decided to pack up her research as there was nothing new she could learn.  As she moved her large notebook she saw a scribbled note on a desk pad by a computer terminal.  It read;

“H_FLE181.  Password: SC13nceGEek1973.  Desktop file ‘TOP SECRET’”

Emma stared at the note, not believing that she hadn’t seen it before.  She carefully moved her bundle of notes to the side and settled in front of the computer terminal.  She pressed the power button and watched patiently as the lights and sounds started up.  Eventually she was faced with a login screen.  She selected the correct user, and carefully replicated the password.

The small folder icon bore the words ‘TOP SECRET’ underneath, and she double clicked it. 

WHIRLYBIRDS

Mitch made good time getting to the base.  It took him far longer to winch every hanger open by hand.  The huge doors in the sunken, grass covered tunnels inched open with every muscle burning effort, eventually allowing him enough space to get inside and search.  The dried bodies of a couple of RAF police still sat in their office, their sentry duty set to last until their bones corroded away to dust.

The first hangar was empty.  The second housed a massive C-130 transport plane.  He found what he wanted in the third hangar as his torch beam illuminated the tail rotors of an RAF Merlin.  The rear ramp was down and he walked up it, boots clanging with a metallic sound as he went.  It seemed well preserved and undamaged.  He had been a passenger on helicopters in the past, even jumped out of a plane similar to the behemoth parked next door, but had never been in the cockpit of an aircraft.

He was in awe of all the dials, buttons, switches and gauges.  He couldn’t imagine ever learning what they all did, but then he was always happy with his place in life.  His place had always been to sit in the back and wake up when they told him to get out.  With his limited knowledge and Steve’s instructions, Mitch decided that this was exactly what they wanted.

He looked for the other things on the list he had been given; finding the aviation fuel stores and the engineering workshop.  Manuals lined a large bookcase in large ring binders.  He decided to search the rest of the buildings and stay the night before making an early start and hopefully getting back within the day.

A small arms locker was located in a guard room, and Mitch took the semi-automatic pistols along with the spare ammunition.  He made himself a bed in the most comfortable place, the mess room with the large settees, and ate a dinner of the cold contents of the tins he carried.  He was never one for comfort even before this turn of events, having joined the army as a teenager and spent his whole life living in cold and uncomfortable conditions.  He lay back and dreamed of riding around in the back of a helicopter again. 

WHY MESS WITH THINGS YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND?

Emma read the notes on the word document which was first in the list.  The file held numerous files and videos; each one making her world less and less believable.

The documented notes on the file referenced and Japanese science team visiting the Arctic Circle.  A US government run site had a science team drilling into the ice, nominally as an archaeological project.  Science teams from all over the world visited under the ‘protection’ of the American Special Forces teams permanently in place.

Emma had been to a number of government run science projects and every one, without fail, had been a weapons testing project.  Accelerant for rocket fuel, material bonding for stealth planes and satellite technology and in her field of virology, bio-weapons research.

This ice drilling went down so deep that it preceded the ice age and went back millions of years, even past the dinosaur’s extinction event.  It wasn’t enough to stop there; they had already gathered more data and samples and fossils than they could analyse but they still had to drill further.

The first few videos showed scientists documenting their finds and discussing theories.  They were all wearing protective suits and the footage looked to be Go-Pro style.  She held her breath as she watched, genuinely terrified of what could be down there. 

She clicked through three videos of similar scenes; two of which were in foreign languages which she didn’t recognise.  The next document was a lab report analysis of biological tissue remains.  The report showed the carbon dating of the sample to make it almost seventy million years old.

This was huge.  All that remained of this time were fossilised remains, not actual biological tissue.  The years she had wasted reading science fiction overloaded her brain with wild ideas; the consequences of handling biological matter from that long ago were enormous.  Without reading further she was sure that this had to have something to do with the phenomena causing most of the population to die.

She slumped in her chair, mouth open and staring at nothing.  She didn’t see or hear Steve come in, and when she spoke she screamed in fright.

“Sorry” he said, chuckling “I didn’t mean to startle you”

Emma opened and closed her mouth to answer, but no words came out.

“What’s wrong?” asked Steve, instantly losing the humour he had found in her initial reaction “What have you found?”

Emma found her voice.  “They found something under the ice.  Seventy million years old.  I think that’s what killed everyone”

She turned to stare at him.

“Show me” he said.

Emma quickly explained what was in the documents she had read, and showed the videos to him.  She went on to the report and had to decipher it for him.

“They found biological tissue” she said “Preserved.  Frozen under the ice from before the event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs”

He didn’t see the relevance, which frustrated her.  It had felt like years since she had been the only scientist in the room.

“It would be like introducing viral meningitis to medieval times; humans wouldn’t be prepared to cope with whatever they’ve found in there – there’s no way of knowing if it was dangerous to us!”

Steve understood.

“How could they be so reckless?” he asked, astonished.

“They probably thought they were smarter than nature.  Clever people have a way of being very stupid sometimes”

The next two videos made the discovery clear.  A high definition set up in a lab showed a team of scientists working around a small bench.  They were speaking Japanese, and despite the face masks Emma could tell they were excited.  They were thawing out the sample carefully, and running various tests on it as they went.  When the ice had been thawed, Emma saw what it was. 

A plant.  Dark green stem and leaves and a large purple petal remained around the stoma. 

The video ran on for another thirty minutes.  Neither of them moved nor spoke, despite not understanding what any of the scientists were saying.  The date in the lower left hand side showed just over a year ago.

The next file was an email.  It had an undecipherable address, but was from a government server.

“BIO SITE STAFF ONLY – CABINET NOT INFORMED.

Japanese gov tests on prehistoric bio-matter have caused fatal side effects.  Unknown source but possibly pollen from flowering fauna.

Initiate lockdown immediately.  Cabinet not informed to date, lockdown procedures initiated. 

Public not informed.  No sign of hazard reaching UK.  Await instructions”

No signature.  No other information.  The time stamp on the email was about three hours before she had been swept away to her own bunker.  They sat in silence for a while.

“Just so as I understand this” Steve said slowly “explain to me what I just learned”

Emma took a long breath and let it out slowly.

“Scientists found a seventy-million-year old plant preserved in the ice from the cretaceous period.  They thawed it out and the pollen caused them to be ill.” She said carefully.

“After that, I can only theorise”

“Please do” Steve said quietly.

Emma chewed her lip for a second, running the idea through her head to check for flaws before she spoke.

“The pollen caused a reaction.  That reaction must have become viral otherwise the pollen could not have swept over the planet.  Airborne viral reaction, average fifteen hours for symptoms to show, death follows within forty-eight.  We’ve been wiped out by a plant that shouldn’t be on the planet anymore”

Both sat there and absorbed the information.

“So why are we alive?” she said, picking the words from Steve’s mind.

“Exactly” he said.

“Can’t help you there” she said, moving for the first time in minutes “We’ve all got it”

Steve looked shocked.

“I think” Emma added lamely.

“You think?” Steve said with a frown.

“Yes.  There’s no obvious differences between the blood results.  I can’t say why we survived, but there’s no possible way we haven’t been exposed to it”

Steve rubbed his face with both hands.  He got up to leave, telling her he needed some time to think it over.

She returned to the computer after he walked out, almost punch drunk, and started the files again from the beginning. 

How stupid. 

How stupid and arrogant and foolish. 

The curiosity of human nature seemed to have condemned its own existence.