After Life (Power Reads Book 2) Read online

  ‘That is why we need control of parliament,’ Beck insisted. ‘Keeping the holosaps in a permanent state of stasis without true freedom of movement is both an insult to their human rights and tantamount to an act of suicide upon the human race. The other ministers do not see things as clearly as you do, Tarquin. They would doom themselves rather than grasp salvation.’

  ‘But it would not be a democratic process. You’re talking about a coup.’

  Beck leaned back in his chair for a moment before replying.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. But this is not about me or anybody else making a grab for power, because there is no power any more. We’re all on tenterhooks waiting to see which way this all goes. I just don’t want to risk us going the way of everything else on our planet: extinction. You know what all the other politicians are like: by the time they’ve made a decision they’ll already have been infected. We must act now.’

  St John closed his eyes. ‘What do you need me to do?’

  Kieran Beck offered St John a reassuring smile as he spoke.

  ‘We can’t afford the public learning that our research stations have been overrun,’ he said, ‘or repeatedly hearing that our buildings are being attacked. We need to keep the media under control.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. What else?’

  ‘As soon as we have political control, I’ll need a major police initiative launched under your command to put down the terrorists wherever they may be, a measure to keep them under control until such time as they have The Falling to worry about.’

  St John narrowed his eyes. ‘That could be anytime, years or even decades away.’

  ‘Or tomorrow, Prime Minister.’

  St John swallowed thickly. ‘And my family? I cannot afford for them all to be uploaded.’

  ‘We have initiatives in place,’ Beck said, ‘for those circumstances when Re–Volution feels that charitable acts are worthy of suitable recompense. Your family need have no concerns about their survival, Tarquin, and nor will any minister who decides to vote alongside you.’

  St John hesitated for a moment. ‘How will it be done?’

  ‘The process will be painless,’ Beck replied. ‘All willing ministers will be administered a drug that anaesthetises and then stops the heart. Uploads will commence immediately.’

  St John knew that what Beck was proposing was as an historic moment as it was an appalling one, the willing suicide of an entire political cabinet in order to maintain political control after the fall of the city. Euthanasia on a grand scale. Sacrifice?

  ‘What if we upload and a cure is found?’ St John asked.

  ‘What if we don’t upload and a cure is not found?’

  ‘And those ministers that refuse?’ St John asked. ‘Hart and his followers?’

  Beck sighed. ‘We cannot choose for them. If they do not upload, then they will be lost to us.’

  St John stood slowly, his brow deeply furrowed. ‘I need to think on this.’

  ‘I understand,’ Beck said, ‘but even if parliament passes the bill, it will take a true leader to show them the way. You must be the first, Prime Minister, the cross from the living to the after–living.’

  St John’s firm, steady gaze flickered slightly, the first hint of fear touching his features. ‘I’ll be ready, if the time comes.’

  He turned away, and was almost at the door when Kieran called after him.

  ‘One more thing, Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘We all do this together, in Parliament, as one when the time comes. Anybody who refuses will be lost to eternity.’

  ***

  29

  ‘Stay here.’

  Icon’s voice was laden with concern as he pulled his hood up over his head and ran from the tent. As he dashed away through the camp Arianna watched as all around her tents were fastened shut, the residents tumbling into or beneath thermal blankets to conceal their presence from the threat of roving helicopters.

  Within moments the entire camp was silent, utterly still.

  Arianna slipped from inside Icon’s tent and hurried in pursuit. The cold forest seemed devoid of life around her, the silence oddly deafening as though it physically enveloped her. She could not help but stop on the track just outside the camp beneath the canopy of trees and simply listen.

  There was no sound of animal life and the sheltered valley stilled the air so that the trees seemed to stand like statues, a petrified monument to nature’s dominance over man. Once, long ago, even a remote valley such as this would have had a distant background hiss of vehicles on arterial roads and of aeroplanes cruising the vast skies above. Now, there was nothing. Arianna closed her eyes and had the sudden and unnerving sense of knowing what it looked and sounded like to be dead.

  A hand yanked her to one side and a voice hissed in her ear as her eyes flew open.

  ‘I told you to stay in the tent.’

  Icon’s voice was fierce, his grip tight. She looked at him as fear flared momentarily inside her. Icon’s grip loosened in response and he pulled her down with him as he squatted back into the bushes.

  ‘Twenty yards out,’ came a whispered voice from one of Icon’s men concealed somewhere nearby. ‘Want me to put them down?’

  Icon shook his head. ‘No, let them come.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Arianna asked.

  Icon did not reply but pointed with one gloved finger out to their right, across open land in the valley to where the main road was just visible snaking its way between the rolling forested hills. Arianna squinted but could not see anything out of place.

  ‘The fork in the valley, under the trees,’ Icon breathed softly.

  There, just visible in the distance, she saw a pair of police motorbikes loosely concealed within a dense copse. The matt black plastic and metal blended in well with the trees and she would never have noticed them were it not for Icon’s guidance.

  ‘You’ve been followed,’ he said. ‘Stay out of sight, this could be a trap.’

  A clicking noise made by one of his men, barely audible even in the otherwise silent woods, made Icon tense up and fall silent. Arianna’s breathing became shallow as she watched the turn in the track up ahead.

  Moments later two figures moved cautiously toward them. Both held pistols in a double–handed grip before them, eyes scanning the track ahead from behind respirator masks. Neither wore uniforms. Another click from nearby and this time Icon answered with two of his own.

  The movement was both explosive and almost completely silent as from the woods a dozen men lurched upright, dense camouflage swaying like fur on their bodies as their rifles whipped up to point at and entirely encircle the two intruders.

  The two men froze where they stood on the track, eyes flicking left and right as Icon leaped up and stormed toward them, a pistol in his hand aimed at them.

  ‘Drop your weapons, hands behind your heads!’

  In the otherwise silent forest Icon’s voice boomed like cannon fire. The two masked men slowly laid their weapons down and put their hands behind their heads. Icon collected the two pistols, looked at the two men for a brief instant and then turned his back to them.

  ‘Kill them both, quietly,’ he said.

  Icon’s henchmen rushed in as one of the captive men shouted out, his voice distorted by his respirator. ‘Why are you not wearing masks?’

  Icon spoke over his shoulder as he walked away. ‘Death is certain in this world, mask or not.’

  Arianna watched as the two captives were restrained by some of Icon’s men as others drew huge knives from their webbing. Icon stalked past where Arianna crouched, watching in horror as the henchmen lifted the blades to the throats of the two captives as others yanked the respirators from their faces.

  Arianna exploded out of the bushes. ‘No! Wait!’

  The men hesitated as Arianna rushed across to them. She stared in amazement as Han Reeves and Myles Bourne, their faces twisted in fear and impotent anger, recognised her instantly.

  �
��You?!’ Han uttered in disbelief. ‘You’re really behind all of this?’

  ‘No!’ Arianna gasped. ‘These people grabbed me before the apartment blew up.’

  Icon stormed back to her side. ‘You know these men, these traitors to humanity?’

  Arianna struggled for words. ‘They’re the detectives who were there when Alexei Volkov’s home was destroyed. I saw them before I was brought here.’

  ‘Then they die,’ Icon snapped. ‘They tried to kill you did they not?’

  Arianna struggled to understand all that had happened. ‘They blamed me for terrorist attacks in the city,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t do them. They think I’m an enemy of the state.’

  ‘You are,’ Icon pointed out, ‘now.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for this,’ she snapped.

  ‘Can you trust them?’ Icon pressed her.

  Arianna looked at the two detectives, both with steel blades pressed against the vulnerable flesh of their necks. The thread of an artery pulsed beneath the blade against Han’s throat. Han and Myles had followed her after she had been abducted in the city, but as police officers that was their job. It had been a police helicopter that had attacked Alexei Volkov’s apartment and both Han and Myles had been there, and yet they had not been prepared for the blast that brought the building down in front of them, so how could they have been anything to do with the attack at all unless…?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted finally as she turned to Icon. ‘All I know is that you cannot kill them.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Icon said and raised his hand to click his fingers.

  ‘No,’ Arianna insisted and clamped his giant fist in her own hand. His skin was as rough as sandpaper and cold to the touch. ‘They may be our only chance of figuring out what the hell is happening. Show them.’

  Icon stared down at her, his disfigurement concealed by his carefully shaped hood but his disdain at being ordered about by Arianna clear. When he did not move, Arianna released his fist and turned to Han Reeves.

  ‘Everybody is lying,’ she said, ‘some more than others, but the biggest lie of all is being told by the government. There is a cure for The Falling.’

  Han Reeves’s face screwed up in disbelief.

  ‘Don’t believe what they’re telling you,’ he snapped back. ‘They’re terrorists, murderers and cowards.’

  Arianna reached up and yanked Icon’s hood aside before he could react and the hood fell away to reveal his ruined face. Han Reeves stared at the horrific scarring, searching for signs of deception.

  ‘Something else,’ he dismissed her, ‘he got burned. It means nothing.’

  Arianna looked about her at the other henchmen. ‘Show them.’ The men did not move. ‘Show them!’ Arianna almost screamed, pointing at Han and Myles. ‘Until you can prove that you’re for real this will never, ever end!’

  The men looked at each other, and then one of them reached up and pulled back the heavily camouflaged hood he wore. His features were perhaps more hideously distorted than even Icon’s, a skull loosely clothed in chunks of flesh and rippled skin. The scars of crude stitches used to seal his face back up during his recovery laced every inch of his face, and his voice was gravelly where the disease had ravaged his vocal chords.

  ‘My name is Malcolm and I recovered from The Falling after four weeks,’ he growled at Han and Myles. ‘Icon saved my life, along with just about everybody else you can see. He stitched my wounds, fed me and kept me alive when I could barely breathe let alone help myself.’

  One by one, encouraged by Malcolm’s gesture, the men removed their hoods. Arianna managed to conceal her horror at their gruesome visages, looking like an army of zombies draped in foliage. They stared at Han and Myles in silence as Arianna spoke to the detectives.

  ‘They all survived The Falling,’ she explained. ‘They fought off the infection because they possessed immunity and their bodies were able to recognise the attack and act against it. That means that running in their blood are antibodies that can save people’s lives and end this. The government, for whatever reason, does not want that to happen.’

  Han looked at the grim collection of deformed men before him and then glared at Icon.

  ‘Immune or not, it doesn’t justify terrorism.’

  Icon stormed up to Han and gripped the back of his head with one hand as with the other hand he pushed the knife blade a little tighter against the detective’s throat. Han got a close up view of Icon’s big, craggy and ruined face as he spoke.

  ‘I will only repeat this one more time today,’ Icon growled. ‘We have attacked nobody. We’re too busy trying to stay alive out here. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

  Han looked into Icon’s one good eye, and then glanced at Arianna.

  ‘What else have you found out?’

  ***

  30

  Arianna had never tasted pine–needle tea before. Brewed simply to make plain hot water more inviting, it was a staple survival beverage to Icon’s men. It helped to mask the stale taste of pond water too – boiling the water killed off all harmful bacteria including fungi like Apophysomyces, but it didn’t alter the taste.

  ‘How long have you been out here?’ Han asked.

  They were sitting in Icon’s tent, Arianna watching as Icon updated Han and Myles on everything. It was bizarre to her, listening to how her entire world had collapsed and been reborn in just twenty four hours as Han asked questions and Icon patiently replied. She knew that the detectives were under no impression that they were trusted; two armed guards stood a few yards away at the tent entrance, rifles held ready for the slightest hint of discord.

  ‘Since the quarantine,’ Icon replied. ‘I don’t even know how many years it’s been.’

  ‘Twenty four,’ Myles replied helpfully. ‘I was six when they cut the city off from the outside world.’

  ‘A quarter of a century?’ Icon asked of himself, not looking up. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It’s long enough,’ Arianna said, guessing that Icon must be nearing his sixties. ‘You’ve been out here for a long time.’

  ‘If you and your people have nothing to do with the attacks in the city, then whey were you there and why did you grab Arianna?’ Han asked.

  Icon explained what they saw on the television broadcasts, about the terrorist attacks and the subsequent investigations that led to the manhunt for Arianna.

  ‘We felt certain that Arianna was somehow connected to everything, and when we saw that she was on the run and had been rumoured to have fled to the south of the city we knew we had to act.’

  ‘For what reason?’ Arianna asked. ‘You never finished telling me why I was targeted by your people.’

  Icon looked at her, his dark eyes seeming to reflect nothing as he spoke.

  ‘There are many possible reasons but right now I cannot share them. I don’t know who to trust.’

  Arianna looked at Han and Myles before she replied.

  ‘Frankly, nor do I,’ she said. ‘I’ve been arrested, shot at, nearly blown up and abducted twice in one day. You think this shit is coming any easier to me?’

  Icon’s big head swivelled up as he looked at her. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Good, then start thinking straight. Right now we have no option but to trust each other, because I have the distinct impression that mistrust is what’s preventing this from all getting out. The government is controlling the media either directly or indirectly, telling lies through the news in order to keep the population afraid and their own objectives concealed. We won’t figure this out if we cannot talk to each other. Agreed?’

  Icon glanced at the two detectives. Han shrugged and nodded. ‘What do you want to know from us?’

  ‘How you came to be here, and exactly how Arianna became involved.’

  Han gestured to Arianna as he replied.

  ‘There was a terrorist attack on the Re–Volution headquarters, in which Arianna was implicated due to her religious beliefs and access to the building
. Shortly before the attack, Arianna was also implicated in the murder of a Russian magnate, Alexei Volkov, her adoptive father and the man whose illegal apartment south of the Thames was destroyed earlier today. At the very least she may have been considered a target by Alexei’s killers, which may be why she was abducted this morning from a rail platform in the city.’

  Arianna wanted to speak but sensed that Icon was digesting the information.

  ‘We did not abduct her twice, only after she was found escaping the apartment block you mentioned,’ he said finally. ‘That means…’

  ‘That somebody else wanted me too,’ Arianna explained.

  ‘I sent two officers to keep an eye on you,’ Han added. ‘If you were involved in the murder and attacks then you were a suspect, and if you weren’t then you might become a target. Somebody got you away from them on that rail platform, and then after that you were taken here by Icon’s men.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you my name,’ Icon growled from beneath his hood.

  ‘You’re well known to us,’ Han explained. ‘However, intelligence didn’t tell us you were a survivor of The Falling, living out here for the last twenty four years and hadn’t been in the city since. Must’ve slipped their minds.’

  ‘You think our own people are in on something?’ Myles asked, appalled. ‘I’ve been an officer all of my life, and I know damned well that my colleagues would never stoop to treason like this.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Icon murmured as he looked up. In the pale light leaking into the tent from outside, his concealed face looked like a ghost’s. ‘What if your life, or your family’s life was on the line? What if your children were dying? What if you knew that everybody in power had stood by and let millions of people die and was lying to those that remained in order to retain their wealth and maintain control? What would you be willing to do then?’

  Myles stared at Icon, unable to reply.

  ‘It is Kieran Beck who is lying,’ Arianna said, saving Myles from Icon’s steady glare, ‘that’s the bottom line.’