After Life (Power Reads Book 2) Read online

  Marcus saw Kerry make a dash for the terminal entrance and he grabbed his remaining gasoline and bottles and ran hard toward the smoke and flame. One of the Wasps on the ground righted itself and beat its wings as it tried to lift off, smoke coiling in a dirty brown vortex from its body. Marcus changed direction and jumped, landing on top of the Wasp with both feet.

  The hard body of the Wasp hit the asphalt beneath him, solid as a bag of rocks under his boots, but he both felt and heard delicate hinges connecting the wings and body crack and splinter beneath the impact.

  ‘Inside, now! Before they recover!’

  He heard Kerry shout at him as she ducked behind a wildly revolving sphere that was trying to take aim at her. Marcus stopped, lit another Molotov and hurled it at the back of the sphere. The explosion shattered the bottle as Marcus hurled himself into cover, fragments of burning glass peppering the terminal doors.

  The sphere collapsed onto one malfunctioning leg, its guns facing away from the terminal.

  Kerry dodged past the damaged sphere and launched herself at the terminal doors, then yanked a tyre iron from her bag and wedged it between them. With a heave of effort she forced them apart enough for Marcus to squeeze through. Marcus dropped his bag between the doors as he passed through them, blocking them open for Kerry as she danced over the bag and then reached down and yanked it through. The door slammed shut again behind her with a dull thud.

  The remaining functional Wasps banged into the glass, some of them still burning and smouldering, their flight awkward as they tried to reach Marcus and Kerry.

  ‘They’ll go around,’ Marcus said. ‘They’ll find another way inside or they’ll alert the troops.’

  One of the spheres was attempting to shuffle around on its remaining functional leg to bring its guns to bear on the terminal doors and windows.

  ‘We need to move, now,’ he said.

  Before Kerry could reply a blast of gunfire smashed the tiled floor near their feet and clattered across the ceiling above their heads. Marcus hurled himself onto the floor as Kerry crouched down with her hands over her head, a shower of shattered ceiling tiles tumbling down around them like snow.

  A murderous voice boomed out across the terminal entrance.

  ‘Hands in the air, right now!’

  Marcus threw his hands into the air and with Kerry turned to see a black clothed soldier, his face concealed behind a mask and an assault rifle, stalking toward them from within the terminal.

  ***

  39

  Marcus stood immobile, his gaze fixed on the advancing soldier.

  ‘On your knees!’

  The man’s voice was coming through a filter across his mouth, thick goggles protecting his eyes. He wore a heavy bullet–proof vest, thick black gloves and heavy duty boots. Ammunition was packed into his belt–kit, fragmentation grenades dangling alongside them and a thick combat knife was shoved into a sheath at his waist.

  Marcus complied without question.

  ‘We’re not infected,’ Kerry called out, still standing.

  ‘On your knees!’ the soldier bellowed.

  Kerry dropped to her knees held her hands high as the soldier stalked toward them, the rifle switching between them as though the trooper had a nervous tick. Marcus could see his eyes behind the mask now, fierce but tinged with caution.

  The soldier paused, standing a few feet away with his finger tight against the trigger. Marcus saw his gaze flick down to the wounds on both of their necks. Kerry spoke before Marcus could formulate a response.

  ‘We’re immune,’ she said. ‘We’re immune to The Falling. The government is lying to you. They’re lying to everyone.’

  ‘Shut up and stay down!’

  The soldier’s gaze flicked back and forth between them. He glanced over his shoulder before shouting again.

  ‘Don’t move and don’t speak!’

  Marcus looked behind the soldier. The airport terminal stretched away through open passport control barriers with empty checkpoints and on toward baggage collection and the lengthy sheltered tunnels that led to the boarding ramps. More troops would be coming, and he realised that the soldier must have been a sentry, a human back–up for the machines guarding the airport entrance.

  ‘It’s true,’ Kerry insisted, ignoring the soldier’s order. ‘They want us dead because we’re proof that you can survive The Falling.’ The soldier’s gaze fixed on Kerry. Slowly, carefully, Kerry went on. ‘Listen, the wound on my neck is from the bite of an infected human. Look more closely. It’s healing. I’ll have a hell of a scar, but I’m alive.’

  The soldier stared at her neck for what felt like an eternity.

  ‘She’s not lying,’ Marcus said. ‘The lunatic bit me too, to pass the immunity on.’

  The soldier looked at Marcus for a moment.

  ‘How?’ he asked finally.

  ‘We’re from the research station ten miles east of here,’ Kerry said. ‘We found evidence of mammals that had developed immunity to The Falling that were surviving in the bayou. I isolated the genes responsible and was going to send them out into the research community for peer review. Dr Reed refused to let me do that, so instead I injected myself with a serum containing the active genes.’

  Marcus took over.

  ‘Dr Reed is working with the government, or whoever wants this to be kept under wraps. He tried to kill us, which was when Kerry got bitten and when she decided to bite me too.’ Marcus turned his head slightly to reveal his own bloodied wound. ‘I’ve still got the fever, but I’m alive.’

  The soldier’s rifle lowered slightly. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kerry said. ‘We figured that it was something to do with the holosaps. They want power and are on the verge of taking over politically. If The Falling can be cured, they’ll lose that power.’

  The soldier watched them for a moment longer. ‘You’re terrorists. Dr Reed gave his life to protect us from people like you.’

  ‘Dr Reed’s here?’ Kerry uttered. ‘We shut his transmission off!’

  Marcus stared at the soldier as he realised what had happened.

  ‘Reed’s quantum storage is here,’ he said to Kerry. ‘They must have had to send him completely here to continue his work in hunting us down. Maybe they couldn’t maintain a transmission from New York?’

  Kerry looked up at the soldier.

  ‘We’re not lying. What the hell is the government doing out here with all of these machines if they’re not hiding things?’

  ‘The sentry ‘bots are just guardians,’ the soldier snapped back. ‘The working machines are being built here.’

  ‘Working machines?’ Marcus echoed. ‘You mean, like factory robots?’

  The soldier remained silent. Kerry gasped as she finally figured it out.

  ‘A workforce,’ she said finally. ‘The holosaps will need a robotic workforce to maintain the physical side of their life: the computers, satellite dishes, construction to build new robots when the old ones malfunction.’

  It took Marcus only a second to grasp why the holosaps would do that.

  ‘They’re building a force to replace us,’ he whispered, ‘to replace humans.’

  The soldier was looking at them, back and forth.

  ‘They’re building a support unit,’ he snapped back, ‘to reinitiate farming methods out here where humans cannot move freely. The machines are here to help humanity and people like you are destroying their efforts.’

  Kerry gasped in disbelief.

  ‘Holosaps don’t need food and I’m right here in front of you!’ she almost shouted. ‘I’m immune to The Falling! We don’t need the goddamned machines.’

  A cracking sound echoed down toward them from the far end of the terminal. In the distance, Marcus saw a door open and several heavily armed soldiers plunge through it.

  The soldier glanced over his shoulder.

  Marcus saw Kerry move. From behind where she crouched she lifted a Molotov and a lighter, the flame touching the
bone dry fuse in a flare of bright flame and coiling smoke. Even as the soldier turned back Kerry hurled the bottle at the tiled floor right in front of his boots as Marcus threw his arms up to protect his face.

  The bottle shattered against the tiles and flames spilled from the burning fluid and splattered across the soldier’s black fatigues as flaming glass fragments showered his arms and gloved hands. The soldier threw his rifle up to point at the ceiling with one hand as with the other he began frantically trying to pat out the flames spiralling up his legs.

  Kerry launched herself at the soldier, Marcus scrambling to his feet in pursuit as she ploughed into him and they plunged down together onto the tiles. Kerry grabbed the soldier’s rifle and pinned it down as she lay atop him, her legs straddling his waist. The soldier swung his free fist at her face but Marcus plunged down and wrapped his arms around the soldier’s arm, pinning him down onto the ground.

  ‘My legs are on fire!’ he roared.

  Kerry turned and grabbed the soldier’s knife from its sheath on his belt, then shoved the wicked serrated blade up against his neck. The soldier’s eyes flared wide and his screams stopped as he stared up at her.

  Kerry glared down at the soldier.

  ‘We’re not lying,’ she hissed. ‘If the holosaps get what they want, every human being will die.’

  Marcus watched as Kerry yanked the blade away from the soldier’s neck and turned, batting the flames burning his fatigues out. Marcus released the soldier’s arm and stamped out the remaining flames as Kerry stood up.

  The sound of running boots and shouts echoed toward them from the terminal as the soldier, still lying on his back, stared up at them.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he asked, his voice rasping.

  ‘One hundred per cent,’ Kerry replied.

  ‘The doors,’ Marcus urged.

  Outside, the Wasps were battering at the thick glass as they tried to get to Marcus and Kerry, and one of the spheres was still jerking awkwardly around on malfunctioning feet to bring its weapons to bear on the doors. The soldier scrambled up onto his feet again and whirled, waving his smouldering gloved hands at his fellow soldiers still charging down upon them.

  ‘Stand down!’ he bellowed. ‘Stand down!’

  Marcus felt a surge of relief as he turned to the running soldiers. The relief transformed grotesquely into horror as the charging soldiers raised their rifles and opened fire.

  A blaze of gunfire raked the terminal around them as Marcus and Kerry hurled themselves back down onto the ground. The bullets smacked into the terminal doors, splintered craters peppering the thick glass.

  ‘Stand down!’ the soldier yelled again.

  Two rounds hit him square in the chest and propelled him backwards into a pillar, his bullet–proof vest shuddering beneath the blows. His rifle spun from his grasp and clattered onto the tiles at his feet as he collapsed.

  ‘Shit!’ Kerry yelled in terror, pinned down behind the wall.

  Marcus moved without thinking, which was probably for the best. He hurled himself across the terminal floor, rolling as he picked up the rifle and knelt over the soldier’s comatose body. He aimed the weapon at the horde of oncoming soldiers and pulled the trigger.

  The heavy M–16 jerked in his arms as three rounds cracked out. The charging soldiers broke formation and dove for cover behind passport booths and baggage carousels, some returning fire as best they could. Marcus ducked down low, fired three more rounds, and then turned to the nearby terminal doors. The damaged sphere was almost facing the doors, its wicked machine guns coming to bear, and the Wasps were now waiting patiently for the doors to be shattered by the gunfire. Marcus turned to Kerry.

  ‘Run!’

  Kerry lurched to her feet and ran, but she headed not for the nearest escape route through the terminal to the east but instead for Marcus’s side. She slumped down alongside him and shook her head.

  ‘I brought you here, we stick together.’

  A blast of deafening machine gun fire raked the terminal entrance as the sphere blazed a fearsome broadside of rounds into the glass. The doors shattered in a cloud of tumbling glass as half a dozen Wasps buzzed loudly into the terminal entrance.

  The glossy black Wasps hummed toward them, metallic wings flickering in the weak light, cruel stingers glinting. Marcus whirled and pressed the muzzle of the rifle against the unconscious soldier’s head.

  The Wasps slowed and hovered six feet away from them. A voice rang out from further down the terminal.

  ‘Lay down your weapons and come out!’

  The soldier at Marcus’s feet groaned and his eyes flicked open. They swivelled to look at the rifle pressed against his head, and then down at his chest where two bullets protruded from his thick protective vest.

  Kerry shouted back at the soldiers. ‘We’ve got a hostage!’

  Silence hung heavy in the air in the terminal. Marcus looked down at the soldier, who raised an eyebrow quizzically at him.

  ‘We’ll kill him!’ Marcus shouted, then looked down at the soldier and gave him a fractional shake of the head.

  A reply rolled back at them. ‘Fine, do it. Saves us the trouble!’

  Marcus stared back down at the soldier, whose expression crumbled into anger. He reached slowly down to his belt–kit and unclipped a pouch. From within he pulled a small black box arrayed with switches beneath a clear plastic cover.

  Marcus watched as the soldier flipped back the plastic cover. A small screen revealed the terminal in Infra–Red, viewed through a camera attached somewhere up high near the ceiling. The soldier swivelled the camera until it pointed at the half–dozen troops crouched fifty yards away across the terminal, their heat signatures clearly visible.

  ‘I don’t want to die!’ he called out to his comrades, his voice trembling with fear that surprised Marcus. The soldier’s face registered only rage.

  A moment’s silence passed and then a solemn voice rolled back toward them.

  ‘Sorry Chad, orders are orders pal!’

  Marcus looked down at Chad, who thumbed a touch–pad on his little box of tricks. He clicked on each of the soldier’s heat signatures and then pressed a single button. All of the soldier’s signatures were suddenly ringed with a flashing red box. Chad turned to look at the Wasps and then tapped in a four–digit passcode and hit Enter.

  The Wasps and the sphere spun around in an instant, the Wasps buzzing loudly as they shot off across the terminal.

  There was a moment of silence, then shouts of alarm and panic. Gunfire erupted, hammering the ceiling further down the terminal and two Wasps jerked in mid–flight and span out of control. The other four zoomed down out of sight as screams of agony shrieked and echoed through the terminal as the soldiers were attacked by their own weapons.

  The sphere shuffled awkwardly past, and a deafening blast of machine gun fire smashed through the passport control booths nearby.

  Marcus looked across at Kerry, who was sitting against the pillar beside Chad and looking pleased with herself despite the horrendous screams and clattering gunfire echoing around them.

  ‘That’s what you meant,’ Marcus said, ‘when you said I was a genius for saying that holosaps are not people.’

  Kerry nodded as the gunfire ceased and the cries of pain faded into silence.

  ‘The holosaps are lying, deceiving millions of people and are responsible for the deaths of billions of innocent lives. Their soldiers work for the government but only to preserve their own lives: if they realised that we’re immune, do you think that they would risk their lives out here for a lie and a bunch of holographic zombies?’

  ‘You think we can tell them all, turn them to the truth?’

  ‘You’re damned right you can,’ Chad said.

  The soldier struggled to his feet and yanked off his mask, revealing a surprisingly young face and a blond buzz–cut.

  ‘You give me immunity to The Falling, and I’ll bring the entire army down on whoever’s behind all of this.’

&
nbsp; ***

  40

  London

  Han Reeves sat on the cold, damp floor of what had once been a meat locker. Myles sat beside him, both of their hands cuffed using cable ties and a pair of rebel guards watching them from an open doorway, old SA–80 rifles cradled in their grasp.

  Arianna would be out cold by now, Han figured. He found her intriguing, an odd mixture of courageous and timid that had a volatile edge to it, like a bomb only partially defused. He struggled now, he realised, between his duty as a police officer and a deep desire to protect Arianna from harm, a feat which he also recognised he had failed spectacularly to achieve: he was under armed guard, she was partially dead and neither of them could be sure that they had a life to return to back in the city.

  ‘You think she’ll pull it off?’ Myles asked.

  ‘The hell would I know?’ Han replied. ‘I don’t even know what it is she’s trying to achieve. Even if she can prove the holosaps are somehow corrupt and gets out of this alive, I don’t know how Icon and his people will use that information to expose the government.’

  ‘They’ve got their immunity,’ Myles pointed out. ‘That in itself is enough.’

  ‘Yeah, provided they get the chance to show it. If Icon plasters his face across the news networks the people will run a mile. Nobody wants to see a ruined face as the poster child of the revolution. He wants Arianna to do it, and I think he wants her to do it from within.’

  ‘But if he wants that, then why bother with all of his weapons?’

  ‘Revenge,’ Han explained. ‘He’s spent half of his life on the run, disfigured and living off the land, and all of it for a lie. A man like Icon’s not going to see the government deposed and then just clap his hands and sing happy songs. He’ll want them to burn for what they’ve done.’

  Myles looked up at the guards, their face concealed by the ubiquitous hoods worn by all of Icon’s deformed minions.

  ‘If they hit parliament it’ll leave a power vacuum,’ Myles said. ‘They might end up destroying what little government we have left.’