Authors: Mark Lukens
The Darwin Effect (22 page)
It looked like an alien planet.
Sanders was crying and he touched her shoulder. She looked at him and wiped at her eyes. “They did it,” she said. “They really did it. They destroyed everything.”
“I’m sorry,” Cromartie said. He thought of his wife and his kids. He could still see their faces from the dreams he’d had. But he’d known they were gone. He’d known it all along.
“I’m sorry,” Sanders whispered like she knew that he was thinking about his family.
They stood there for a long time in the hot sunlight, the desert breeze rustling their hair.
“So what now?” Sanders finally asked as they watched the sun dip down towards the mountains.
“We get those supplies up here. We try to survive.”
Three weeks later
I
t had all started out as an experiment.
Cromartie had talked many times with MAC over the last few weeks. MAC was permitted to tell them so much more now. The scientists in this compound knew that the end was coming soon for the human race. Whether that end was from our own hand by a nuclear war or a chemical weapon we dreamed up, or from nature with a pandemic that wiped out our species or massive eruptions of our planet’s crust, or from space in the form of a monolith asteroid or gamma ray burst, the chances of us carrying on for another million years seemed pretty slim to them. They felt our only hope as a species was to colonize other worlds someday. Of course the obvious choices were our own moon, other moons in our solar system, and Mars. But maybe from there we could discover other Earth-like planets beyond our solar system in the far future.
These scientists built several simulators underground that were designed to work like a ship would in space. It was a place where they could train future astronauts and pioneers, those who would volunteer to travel out into space, the first of the colonists. Everything down there was designed to be just like a spaceship. Even the windows that looked out onto space were really only computer screens.
But when these scientists were sure that the nuclear wars were coming, they changed their plans. They developed a suspended animation system that could freeze human bodies without damaging cells. They created advances in genetics that helped the human body hibernate like a grizzly bear would, but for a much longer time period. These underground simulators were supposed to be used for training, but now they would be used to carry on the human race. The food in these simulators was designed to stay good for hundreds of years, just like it would in space. A water system was designed that could recycle water for centuries. A solar panel system above ground created the electricity so the air scrubbers could run, and all of the other systems, including MAC who controlled it all. Most of the systems would lie dormant for a hundred years so the radiation would have time to dissipate, the diseases to die out, life to evolve and carry on. And then after these hundred years had passed, MAC was programmed to start the systems up and wake them up.
People were selected for this program, people who had the skills to build a new society. They were abducted and taken from their families. They were put into cryosleep. The hatch was closed and MAC was programmed to wake them up in one hundred years.
“But why make us think we were going to another planet?” Cromartie asked MAC.
“They feared that waking up to a destroyed world would be too much of a shock to you mentally and emotionally,” MAC told him. “They felt that if you thought you were dying on a spaceship, and then realized you had a chance to survive, perhaps you could be thankful that you were still on Earth. They wanted to give you a time period to adjust to your new situation, and to overcome the known side effects of long-term suspended animation like short-term memory loss, anxiety, paranoia, nightmares, hallucinations, and depression.”
“And the time period for our adjustment was the food supply,” he said to MAC.
“Exactly,” MAC answered. “The food was designed to last less than a year. If you could survive that long on this ship, then I was programmed to reveal the truth to you. It was their way of making sure only the strongest and most compassionate were left to carry on the human race, a way of weeding out the bad, a way of controlling evolution in their own way.”
Cromartie didn’t respond.
If they could have just waited a few more months, Cromartie thought a thousand times. If they could have been good to each other, if they could’ve helped each other, then they would all be here right now: Ward, Butler, Abraham, and Rolle.
We could use their skills, Cromartie thought. We could’ve used them, but we had to attack each other.
There was no use dwelling on it and Cromartie began to have less and less conversations with MAC now. Cromartie never knew who those scientists were who had built these simulators and eventually designed this program. And he would never know why he was chosen specifically. He would never know all of the reasons they did what they did. All he knew was what MAC could tell him. And he really didn’t care anymore. There was nothing he could do about it now.
A few days after they were out of the simulator they buried Butler, Abraham, Ward, and Rolle in a far corner of the gigantic compound. They marked their graves with crosses they had constructed from the wood they had torn away from the damaged building. They said their goodbyes over their gravesites, and then they carried on.
Cromartie and Sanders set up tents outside one of the buildings until they could get at least one of the buildings in livable condition again. They didn’t want to sleep down in the simulator anymore … they wanted to sleep outside in the air, on the ground, and under the sky.
Two months later
C
romartie and Sanders dug out an area to grow crops, and they built a pen for the animals that MAC released from cryosleep down in the storage area of their simulator. It wasn’t easy getting some of the goats, pigs, and chickens up and out of the hatch, but they managed it. There was a hand pump that pulled water up from an aquifer underneath the ground. They found books about farming and raising animals among their boxes of supplies in the cavern above the simulator, but Cromartie still wished every day that Abraham was still alive to help them with this.
Cromartie didn’t feel too comfortable going back down into the simulator after they got the animals, seeds, and many of the other supplies they needed from down there. He still couldn’t help suspecting that MAC wasn’t working properly even though he didn’t really have any proof. He had panicky thoughts about MAC closing the hatch door that led down into the simulator and sealing him in there so the computer wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.
But maybe it’s me,
Cromartie thought.
Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe I’m still having some side effects.
At nights Cromartie thought about his wife and children. He had fantasies that they had somehow survived the nuclear holocaust, that there were other compounds like this one all over America. But deep down inside he knew it wasn’t true. He knew they were gone and he cried himself to sleep sometimes. He couldn’t picture their faces that well anymore, but he still saw them in his dreams.
Sometimes he had the same dream that he’d had down in the Darwin. It was Sunday morning again and they were making pancakes. Carrie had a plate of pancakes for him with the steam rising up off of them in the sunlight flooding in from the bay windows. Julie scolded him about reading the newspaper, and he tucked it down beside him on the bench seat. It was all bad news in the paper these days anyway.
The dream wasn’t always the same. Sometimes he saw the flash of light outside the windows, the tidal wave of bright death that was coming to vaporize them. But other times he spent more time with his family. He would wake up thinking that he was back home again for a split second, and his face would be wet with tears.
Sanders wouldn’t ask if he was okay because she knew what he’d been dreaming about. She would just hold him until they fell asleep again in front of the fire.
Little by little they survived and they carried on. They were busy all day and tired at night. He and Sanders grew closer and closer together. And eventually they made love, both of them feeling that they had an obligation to procreate and carry on the human species.
“Why should we carry on the human race?” Sanders had asked one night while Cromartie held her. The night sky above them was dotted with thousands of stars; the air was chilly, but the fire they’d built was keeping them warm. “We messed everything up once. What’s to keep us from doing it again?”
Cromartie didn’t have a good answer for her.
They found other hatches around the gigantic fenced-in compound that they now called home. They couldn’t get the hatches open, and MAC told them that they weren’t allowed to tamper with them. If the people in the other simulators below the ground found the answer, if they could work together and get along, then they would find their own way out in the next four months. If not, when the onboard computer in each simulator blew the hatch open at the programmed time, then there might be nothing except rotting bodies below inside the simulators.
They had counted six other hatches altogether. All of the hatches had an array of solar panels constructed onto metal poles all around them … the solar panels that were keeping them alive. There were six hatches altogether, six simulators with six more people in each one below the ground; a possible total of thirty-six more people who could join them.
But maybe all of them wouldn’t make it.
Maybe none of them would.
All Cromartie and Sanders could do was wait to see if those people emerged, and in the meantime they would keep on living, keep on surviving, keep on raising crops and livestock. They talked about eventually exploring farther beyond their compound. But the desert was a formidable obstacle at this moment and they wanted to see who, if any, would emerge out of those holes in the ground when the hatches blew.
They waited every day for one of the hatches to open. They waited every day for someone down there in one of those simulators to see the answers in their dreams, in their lost memories, or to somehow figure out the truth. They waited, but the hatches never blew.
As the days crept by, Cromartie often pondered Sanders’ words from a few weeks ago: Why should they carry on the human race?
Do we even deserve this?
he wondered. Do we deserve to carry on?
Who knew?
Cromartie tried not to think about it; he tried to keep his mind on their daily tasks … and on surviving … and carrying on.
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I’ve been writing since the second grade when my teacher called my parents in for a conference because the ghost story I’d written had her a little concerned. By the time I was fourteen years old I was reading every Stephen King book I could find at the local public library. I was hooked—I knew I wanted to be a writer.
Since that time, I’ve had several stories published and four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood, one of which is in development to be a film. I’m the author of Ancient Enemy, Descendants of Magic, The Summoning, Night Terrors, Sightings, The Exorcist’s Apprentice, What Lies Below, Devil’s Island, Ghost Town: a novella, and A Dark Collection: 12 Scary Stories. I’m a member of The Horror Writers Association.
I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. But after many travels and adventures, I settled back down in Florida, near Tampa Bay. I live with my wonderful wife and son, and a stray cat we adopted.
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Ancient Enemy … it’s awake and it wants things … you have to give it what it wants …
