The Rot (Post Apocalyptic Thriller) (2 page)

Jesus, has it really only been two months? All right, closer to three. It’s like being a kid again, holidays with all those weeks stretching out ahead of you. Seemed to last a lifetime, playing outside in the sun, trips to parks and the seaside. Then when you grow up everything goes by so much quicker; you work, you don’t stop to smell the roses – you take it all for granted. Not like when you’re little, everything’s an exploration, everything’s wondrous. The simplest of things, like kicking a ball around on a patch of wasteland becomes magical. Time, since it all happened,
has
slowed down, like the summer holidays when I was small. There’s been nothing wondrous about any of this, though, nothing to marvel at. Only a longing for how things were before. But you can’t go back. I don’t think I even… No, I didn’t appreciate what was left when it still was there. When things were whole. Like I say, I was too busy.

Busy trying to stay alive mostly.

I shouldn’t really
be
alive anyway – I mean, I haven’t eaten anything in all that time or had anything to drink. Not really. The SKIN’s kept me going, but I feel like a ghost drifting through this new world sometimes. Like I don’t really exist… until something happens and I realise that actually, yes, I do – and there are so many dangers, so many things that could happen to me that would turn me into the real thing. A ghost… or worse, one of
them
. Right, I know what you’re thinking, how can I be talking to you now when I haven’t eaten a scrap of food or taken a drink in so, so long. I know the facts and figures: you can manage about three weeks without food. Without water, you’ll only last three days. And I can’t help thinking about Mum when I think about all this, surviving on that drip because she’d forgotten how to eat – fucking dementia – until they pulled the plug, that was. “It’s cruel to keep her alive like this,” the doctors told us, “it’s artificial.” So they’d disconnected her. We’d tried to feed her, spoon-fed her yoghurts, but she wouldn’t have any of it – and in the end she just shrivelled up, a tiny husk like a mummy in that hospital bed. We spent three days just waiting, me, my Dad and Aunty Pat – three days waiting and holding her hand, saying prayers that were never answered. But I tell you what, she fought – good Christ did she fight to hold on to life, to hope, right up to the last breath.

I take after her, I reckon; I’ve got her stubbornness.

Dad went on for five years after that. Killed himself, because he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Those were the big two weren’t they, dementia and cancer. The two diseases we were struggling so hard to fight, until… These we thought, naively, were the ones which would finish us off as a race. Can’t say I blame him for the choice he made, he’d seen enough of what happened to Mum as she wasted away; he just gave in. Neighbours realised that his milk was piling up outside and called the authorities, who smashed down the door to find the empty pill box next to him, his body slumped over the couch. He’d been there for the same amount of time we’d spent in the hospital… I didn’t see him until the funeral, and by then the undertakers had done their work – and I remember thinking there was nothing more artificial than that. I can imagine what he must have looked like when they found him, having now seen so much of it first-hand.

Doesn’t do any good to think about that, though. What’s the point?

How did I come to be talking about it anyway? Oh right, the SKIN – how it kept me alive. Even more artificial. In a word: recyc. It’s been doing that since day one, taking the last meal and the last drink ever to pass my lips, taking the waste from that, and using it, breaking it all down into the bare minimum needed to nourish me – then feeding that back into my body. Don’t ask me to explain the ins and outs – ha! – because they’re above my paygrade, not that I have a paygrade anymore. Beyond my understanding then, shall we say. Something the eggheads cooked up in their research and development labs – and sometimes I thank them for that, though other times I want to spit on their graves; if I could spit anywhere, that is. It’s also a prototype, the first and – as far as I’m aware – only one in existence, unless similar suits were being worked on in other parts of the world, of course. You should have seen the number of forms I had to sign before I was even allowed into that place, let alone told about the SKIN. Wanted my first born and everything.

The endless dreams I’ve had about that last meal – that last supper – they gave me. Steak, potatoes, veg, everything the body could possibly need – washed down with water. No beer, no whisky; couldn’t poison myself before the experiment began, you see. I even had to have a detox a couple of weeks before I was taken to the facility. All part of the purification process. Although you wouldn’t necessarily be completely “pure” if you had cause to use the SKIN, they needed
me
to be a baseline. It was only intended to be a week anyway, that first lot of tests, but things didn’t exactly pan out that way, as you’ll probably already know if you’re listening to this. If there’s nobody left in the future to listen, then, well… Let’s not go there. Let’s assume there’s still hope. Let’s show a little of Mum’s fighting spirit, shall we, Adam?

Oh, that’s a point – I haven’t said who I am yet, have I? My name’s Adam Keller. I’m not a captain, but I am a lieutenant. A former flight lieutenant in fact… and a test pilot. There’s nothing I like better than to be up in those clouds, preferably at breakneck speeds – though that was how I had my little accident in the first place. Not my first, of course, but the one that grounded me – at least as far as my Queen and country were concerned. Months in hospital, leg pinned; a regular bionic man. After that, I was fit enough, just not fit to test planes that flew at those kinds of speeds. Up until that happened, I was on a fast track to possibly representing my country up there, out in the Final Frontier, or a Galaxy Far, Far Away, depending on your preference. Instead, I wound up being a professional guinea pig, test ‘piloting’ everything apart from the planes I loved so much. Couldn’t really complain, it paid well – especially under-the-counter stuff.

Oddly, I felt the closest to my once-cherished goals of space exploration by testing the SKIN. It’s what it was originally developed for – not just inhospitable environments on this planet, but others as well. A survival suit. It’s right there in the name, right at the start: Survivor’s Kinetic Integrated Network. S.K.I.N. A
second
skin, powered by your own movement – was how it was described to me by that nice Dr Weeks. Reminded me a little of Stan Laurel from those old black and white movies, he did. I imagined that the slightest harsh word would make him bawl his eyes out… Oh, right. On point. A second skin, one that would adapt to protect against the cold, from disease and toxins, filter out impurities in the air – even make air that was previously unbreathable safe for human consumption – and keep a person ticking along indefinitely. Or until help arrived in the form of a rescue mission, say.

Personally, I’m not holding my breath. – that’s even now, as I speak, being filtered by the tiny, microscopic robots that work so hard on my behalf. Most of the time, I even forget they’re there, covering my entire naked body, giving me a weird shimmering appearance if you get too close – which I daresay wouldn’t hurt with regards to that ghostly metaphor – although a better description would probably be that it’s like a fish’s scales. But – and I hadn’t thought about it till just now, until I started talking about rescue missions – there are still people up there, out in space, that haven’t been affected by all this. That might find my recordings. Do they even know what’s happened, I wonder, or did radio communication just go dead on them? They should probably just stay up there, because one thing’s for damned sure, if they come back down to Earth it’s going to be with a bump – whatever their landing’s like. They’re going to find it a much-changed place; going to be in for a shock when they see what’s happened to—

Bear with me, I’m not great at this. I never kept a diary when I was a kid, was never much for the social-media craze that swept the world back in the day and never really went away again, only got worse and worse. Always found it hard enough to talk to other people in person, let alone by electronic means. This is different, though – this is important. This is something that needs reporting; that’s worth chronicling, even if it’s only fucking aliens that find it in thousands of years’ time.

Not my great escape, although I will get to that in a second, but everything afterwards. I’ll try and keep this… what, journal?… try and keep it up to date. I figure if nothing else, it might just stop me from going stark, staring mad. Hold on, let me just see if—

Stop. Playback.

Resume recording:

God, what a complete and utter wanker I sound. Samuel Pepys I am not, but I’m all there is, so tough shit.

Too easily distracted, too random. I’ll try to keep it on track now and get through what happened at the facility first of all. Try not to bore anyone with my reminiscences about my folks, about life before all this. It’s just that I can’t help thinking back. Can’t help wishing that—

The facility. Okay, picture this: I’m taken there in the middle of the night, only allowed to pack a few essential items, I’m told – won’t need them anyway. Ain’t that the truth? Thankfully, I’m not really a sentimental kind of guy – my small flat’s quite bare. I’m also a ‘travel light’ type of person, always have been. Goes back not only to my time in the armed services, but also the travelling I did in my late teens. Backpacking mainly, staying in hostels or just camping out. Saw most of the world that way, and what I didn’t I saw when I joined up. Not going off topic again, it’s relevant I promise… Right, right. The facility. I was picked up by a dark 4x4, all very
Men in Black
, and we drove for a good few hours. After the first hour I began to notice fewer and fewer buildings, as we wound our way up and down country lanes.

So there we were, out in the middle of nowhere and away from prying eyes, and as dawn broke over the horizon we came up on our destination. Well, we came up on the fencing surrounding it – electrified I was guessing, and patrolled by guards in navy jumpsuits with guns and Alsatians. At the gate, IDs were checked and I was even palm-printed. Then we drove through the grounds and I got my first clear view of the facility itself. There were maybe a dozen storeys to it, and I thought I saw the edge of a rotor on the roof; some kind of landing pad? Then we parked up outside, slotting in beside the other cars that presumably belonged to staff. The same level of security continued inside here, as several armed men greeted us. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Blofeld was inside, cooking up his diabolical schemes, but there was only Weeks – who was the head of this particular programme. I got the impression it was his baby and he was very proud of it; had every right to be, as it turned out.

After saying our hellos, I was whisked up in a lift to a mid-level floor – judging from the numbers – the one where the SKIN was being developed and would be put through its paces. Wasn’t a large floor, just a few rooms and corridors, including a place where I could eat and a room to billet in until they were ready to begin the tests. Not the tests on the suit, oh no – first came round after round of medical examinations, a lot of them conducted by Weeks and a nurse. I never did catch her name, but I caught the way she looked at me when she didn’t think I was taking any notice. She was pretty, that woman – long tawny hair tied up in a bun, kind eyes behind her glasses. The kind of girl I could have seen myself with; no attachments – just something fun, y’know?

I’ve never been great with relationships; comes from not being great with people full stop. So the women I’d been with in the past, once I’d gotten over that awkward first hurdle, didn’t tend to be anything more than casual flings. And when I say ‘casual’, I don’t mean I took any risks in
that
department. I was careful.

This is probably not something I should be talking about in a historical document, is it? Like I said, no Sammy Pepys.

Didn’t know her name, but then who was to say Weeks was the doctor’s real name? It’s all cloak and dagger with these guys, but I could respect that. I don’t tend to shove my nose into business that doesn’t concern me, and I know when to keep my mouth shut, which is probably what got me most of these gigs in the first place. This one I figured I could do standing on my head, once I’d been given the option of whether to go through with it or back out. Sitting on my arse reading or watching TV, playing vid-games in a sealed off room to see whether this new suit they were talking about worked in different environments? Piece of cake, I said to myself. Then they told me about the other stuff.

First there was the fact they were going to shave me completely, they’d left that off the job description – something to do with conductivity. SKIN on skin. Wouldn’t grow back either, as long as I was wearing it. I swallowed that. After all, it wouldn’t be forever and I was getting paid enough. Then there was the big one.

“It’s going to do what?” I asked.

“In layman’s terms,” Weeks said to me, “it’ll take your waste and reprocess it on a loop, to sustain your body.”

“I’m going to be eating my own shit, is that what you’re telling me? Drinking my own—”

Weeks held up his hand and shook his head at the same time. “I wouldn’t have put it so crudely myself, and it will be more like you are absorbing the processed nutrients than eating – once the SKIN is covering you completely, you won’t be able to eat or drink anything in the way that you normally do. Look, you really don’t have to worry about all that.”

“Oh,
don’t
I?” I replied.

“It’s not harmful in any way, I assure you,” Weeks insisted. “Please, Lieutenant Keller…”

If I’d pushed the point I think the tears would have come and Weeks would’ve started scratching at the top of his head. But I sighed, shook my head, and signed the releases, thinking it probably sounded worse than it was. In all honesty, it does – you don’t even really notice what’s happening mostly; like any other ‘natural’ function, only it’s being taken care of by the SKIN rather than you. And, like I say, it was only going to be for a little while at a time; a week for starters. It’d go quickly enough with stuff to entertain me – I’m a slow reader, so one e-book would probably see me right, though there were thousands on the tablet they gave me. I could catch up on some of those classics I’d never got around to checking out, like
Moby Dick
; you know, the one where that sailor was chasing the whale.
War and Peace
, stuff like that. Stuff that… well, I don’t think is going to be around now in years to come. Maybe not even in months to come.