2136: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

  2136

  A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

  Matthew Thrush

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  ≈ The love of my life ≈

  This story is dedicated to my wife, Bethany Thrush, who is always there for me and has been the life root for my inspiration to write this story. Her love and patient insight has enabled me to make this story a reality. And her suggestions allow my edits and rewrites to shine ever brighter. My life would be nothing without her. Thank you for being an amazing supporter of my work, my passion, and my love of writing. You are a true gift from God. I love you.

  ≈ Prologue ≈

  June 13, 2136—When the sky fell down.

  I awoke to a world of chaos and darkness.

  I was on the floor of one of the bio labs along with a case of glass vials full of REZ 3 serum.

  I don't remember falling.

  As I maneuvered around the fragile vials full of blue anti-aging elixir, I made sure to avoid the ones that had broken and were leaking onto the white tiles.

  Wiping the shards of broken glass off my lab coat I had to shield my eyes from the bright red floodlights flashing overhead. The dull echo in my eardrums muffled out the words on the intercom. What’s happened?

  I knelt with my fingers pushing on my ears and managed to block just enough of the deafening blaring to hear the female robotic voice broadcasting over the Secure Emergency Network.

  'This is not a drill. There has been a breach in the system's stations. Please make your way to your designated evacuation pod for muster with your MO specialist. I repeat, this is not a drill.'

  The Automated Recall Computer's (ARC) emergency broadcast was on a two-minute loop. In the unlikely instance of an emergency, the system was designed to automatically upload emergency protocol and issue an evacuation. I guess an emergency was more likely than they thought. My mind was spinning over the robotic words. The system's stations are down? What does that even mean? They’re off? Or inoperable? And if they’re down, what good would Mission Ordinance do? I grabbed the nearest operating table and pulled myself to my feet.

  I felt a surge of pain in my kneecaps as they pressed into some of the broken glass. Luckily, it didn't draw blood. I squinted through the flashing red light to make out the features of the room. I fumbled through the semi-darkness with one hand on the wall, another outstretched before me. The crimson hue was useless. Every few seconds when the siren light spun I was blinded all over again while my night vision fought to adjust to the pitch black. This was an endless cycle of insanity as I blindly made my way around the room toward the door. I felt pressure on the back of my head and thought one of the machines was jabbing me, but as I went to brush it away my hand made contact with a fleshy substance. My teeth bit down into my lip from the sudden pain my touch had caused. I could taste the bitter iron of blood in my mouth and spat into the darkness. The object pushing on my skull was no object at all, rather my brain swelling and desperately trying to free itself from my skull.

  My very own parasite clawing its way out its pancreatic sac in search of its next host.

  The grapefruit-sized swelling protruding from my matted hair felt sticky and moist. And, tender—very, very tender—and fresh. The pus stuck my fingers together with its foggy membrane.

  The moment I lifted my head and attempted to stand upright, my body collapsed sideways. I lost all motor function in an instant and went tumbling into the wall. A sharp pop jolted my shoulder and the socket immediately started throbbing. A sudden wave of vertigo launched me to my knees a second time. Seconds later, my stomach fulfilled its safety protocol when a contagion enters the body. The flashing sirens illuminated the dark black letters Hazardous Materials on the waste bin a few feet away. I raised my face from my knees, leaving a competent pool of oral excrement in my wake. The sleeve of my lab coat wiped the remaining grit from my lips.

  The Easy Make Egg curdled on the floor as I cleared my senses with several steady breaths. With the support of one of the nearby walls, I oriented myself against its stability to fend off the whiplashes of vertigo that threatened to send me to my knees again. I inched my way slowly along the wall towards the door leading out of the lab, my hand never leaving its smooth surface.

  In my nauseating whirlwind I tripped over something on the floor, and smacked my forehead on the edge of the table. White specks floated into existence in my vision with every rapid blink. I gripped the leather cushion on the table and hauled wobbly feet under me. Through the red flashing I saw the body. The clot in my throat returned, and had I not just emptied my stomach of its breakfast, I would have vomited again. My wrist rattled over my mouth as I tried to hold back the gagging.

  Three seconds later the floodlights lit upon the numbers 100 embroidered on the chest of the white shirt the dead man wore. I tried my best to ignore the rotting tissue falling away from his cheekbone and the white pus leaking from both eye sockets. Let’s just say, number 100 had not fared well during trials. Nor had the others.

  Volunteer 100—Terminated.

  Number 100 had been the most promising of the volunteers administered the serum. In the first twenty-four hours the subjects were in a calm state. Vitals were normal and improving. As was expected. Within thirty-six hours the skin had regained its elasticity and color in each of the subjects. After fifty-two hours, they were up and moving, full of energy, and they were healthy, a younger version of themselves. Some exhibited signs of age resistance and reversal as significant as fifty years! Preliminary data revealed the serum had worked, better than we could have imagined. All ninety-nine of the volunteers had no signs of their actual old age. BioTic had solved the problem of death. The volunteers were proof that the ravaging effects of age could be reversed.

  Then everything changed.

  At seventy-five hours, our optimism was dashed to pieces as numbers 1 through 23 collapsed; their bodies spasming on the floor until the muscles stopped twitching. Each one had died within the first two minutes of the onslaught of the seizures. Numbers 24 through 87 were holding strong—muscles, tissues, tendons and neuron activity all reactivating and reproducing at exponential rates.

  At 107 hours, all were lying in puddles of their own blood and erupted organs. Their eyes had burst, their ears oozed hardened, yellow pus, and their muscles had dislocated completely from their bones, some of which had snapped in half entirely.

  In a desperate attempt to counteract the adverse side effects, numbers 88 to 99 were quarantined in the cryogenic chamber and pumped full of nitrogen to slow the regeneration of the blood cells. All died similar deaths in their solitary confinement chambers later that night. Their vitals had skyrocketed just before taking a nosedive. Within two minutes they went from healthy, fully functional younger images of their former selves to vibrating carcasses castrated on the cold, hard floor, black blood everywhere. The stench reminded me of dying fish.

  Their lifespans crossed the peak of 200 hours before relapse and total bodily shutdown. All ninety-nine were wheeled off to the infirmary for incineration. With the anti-aging serum still in test trials, BioTic couldn’t risk an outbreak to the rest of the crew and inhabitants onboard Proc 1.

  I had lost all hope of breaking the genetic code for the REZ 3 serum, until I met number 100. I could tell there was something different about him from the moment I shook his hand. He was calm, quiet, and strangely indifferent. He felt like the missing puzzle piece to a
n impossible equation of DNA strands and chromosomes. I don’t know what it was, but I just knew, in my heart of hearts, that he was the key to breaking the code.

  The quad-cycle computers ran the calibrations for a week before I felt confident enough that the results were valid. Chromosome 13 was flagged as the faulty speck believed to be causing the reversal of the anti-aging serum. Instead of returning the youthfulness back to the host, and allowing them to stabilize, their bodies reverted back to Nature’s natural cycle, except now at 1,000 times the speed.

  REZ 3 worked initially, but after twenty-four hours the outcome was fatal. Each volunteer had rapidly aged and then died as a direct result of elevated cell degeneration.

  In laymen terms, all ninety-nine volunteers had died of old age.

  So much for the anti-death magic elixir.

  My vision returned to normal as I continued to stare down at the last of the willing subjects to volunteer for the program. Why did he have to die too? My mind raced back to the last dose I had administered to him two weeks prior. During his daily checkup, his vitals had looked good and were holding. And yet, he had died too. ARC came back over the intercom shattering my reclusive dream. I wished it were all a dream.

  ‘System's machines have failed. Propulsions 1, 11, 19, and 21 have failed. Proc 1 has lost all power in the main thrusters. Prepare for impact. I repeat, Proc 1 is going down.'

  What! I was violently jerked to the side and smashed into the adjacent wall. The dead body of number 100 slid on top of me. His puffy, blank eyes glared down at me. When the floodlights shone again, number 100's features spurred curiosity within me. There were no visible signs of death. His eyes hadn't burst, his ears weren't bleeding, and there was no evidence he had had a seizure. I squeezed my hand out from under him and felt for a pulse. I waited for ten seconds—hopeful.

  ARC made me jump as her static voice blared through the intercom.

  'All stations must evacuate to their designated areas IMMEDIATELY! Systems are critical. Make your way—'

  ARC went out in a gurgle of static. I felt Proc 1 rattle beneath me as the engines strained against the weight of the ship. With power lost to the propulsion tubes, there was no way the backup generators could compensate for that amount of wattage. We were going down.

  Number 100 shot to the ceiling with a sudden whip. His head snapped to the side and hung there crooked. I soon joined him against the ceiling. I hung weightless for the next several seconds as my body floated in midair. The broken vials of REZ 3 and the purple substance within their sealed glass bodies hovered all around me like sharp bubbles ready to burst. My eyes shifted to number 100. Did he just blink? I had my gaze locked on his face when my body lurched back to the ground, well before I ever heard the recoil of the explosion

  Number 100’s limp frame landed beside me, our eyes inches from one another. The back of my head burned and my fingers tingled. The room faded in and out as I struggled to remain conscious. Just before the world turned to black, I saw his eyes twitch open and look at me.

  He was alive!

  ≈ Chapter 1≈

  When the Earth finally dies, and we've gorged and sucked and drilled every last morsel from her belly, will we be walking corpses tied to the same noose as sheep for a slaughter, or will we, when our toes scrape the cliff's lapping tongue, resist and push back? When that day comes, I hope I can say that I gave it all that I had, that I fought and resisted as long as I could. That I pushed before the fall.

  — W.W. (The last scientist on Earth)

  Journal Log 4501-B37—The Dying Man

  October 10, 2204

  April 7, 2133—Three years before the outbreak

  I could smell my skin sizzling before I felt the sun streaming in through the slits in the walls. The room's features looked pale, as if a thin lens was cast over my pupils. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the glare. The ragged tarp that I used as my curtain to cover up the hole in the wall lay in a wadded ball on the floor. I'd have to be sure to stop by the Market after my rounds today to see if Roxx got any spare parts when the last junk raiders passed through.

  I tossed my feet over the edge of the cot, felt the cold of hard stone and dirt against my toes. Fine grains of sand shimmered in the air like powder. I stood and shook my blanket against the back wall. The red dirt that had collected on the fabric fell in a heap. The pile was two feet high and only getting bigger. I'd need to dump it down by the ravine before too long.

  My hut wasn't an ideal place to live by any means, but it was home. With limited supplies available, we made do with what little scraps we found along the roads and in abandoned buildings or junkyards. Fortunately, I had found a section of Precinct 11 that was smooth. As my toes played in the red sand, I wondered what dirt used to look like before the solar flares burned everything. My skin turned a pale crimson from the sand before I squeezed my toes into my buskins.

  The combat boots were from before the flares, when the military used to execute missions over in Afghanistan. When the alliance was formed, militaries were disbanded. With no more war there was no longer a need. Plus, the military proved way too expensive to maintain. And with each of the pyramids costing three times the government's full yearly budget, cuts had to be made. Desperate times call for desperate measures. With the new alliance between eight of the leading nations, a future remained possible. And thanks to China's endless supply of cheap labor and forbearance of our nation's debts, Project Sky was initiated.

  I walked over to the hole in the side of my shack and poked my head through the wall panels to survey the damage. A mound of sand had gathered at the base, but that was about it. Someone was looking out for me. Maybe my luck would hold out for the lottery later today. Proc 1 loomed like a florescent orb of sunshine in the distance. Its metallic ultraviolet-retardant panels reflected the dark blue of the ocean as its thrusters sucked up the seawater into its propellers. The blue pyramid was the future everyone hoped for. A dream out of reach. An impossibility. We all prayed we'd be one of the hundred that SIND selected to rise up into the blue heaven and leave this hell behind. I knew the odds. Not good. I had reluctantly placed my name in the drawing three days prior and signed my name in the ledger. I almost missed the deadline.

  The blue water rising like a wet mist was beautiful as it was sucked through the one million ton suction thrusters and into the turbines to generate power. Due to the excessive need for water to cool the engines and fuel the turbines, several million gallons of seawater filtered through the machine each day. The sea level dropped three centimeters the first five years Proc 1, 2, and 3 were in rotation. The other ten Proc ships went up over the next fifteen years. There was no telling what the water level was now. The floating pyramids looked like blue diamonds in the sky with a black fog as its backdrop. The pollution that these things released into the atmosphere was...insane. Three trailer-sized vents spit out the exhaust twenty-four hours a day. The only time I had ever seen one paused was for maintenance to remove the blockage that had built up over time in the shafts. The black soot was scraped off the edge and splashed into the sea.

  The sky lost its blue a long time ago and took on an opaque hue. Actually, I've never seen it otherwise. We were the sky generation. Born grounders with a propensity to soar. It was the dream of every child in the precincts to one day be lifted up into one of the flying pyramids. Sadly, fantasy has no place in a world being burned alive by the sun. With the ozone layer fractured in three places – along the Antarctic Circle, above all of Northern and Central America and most of Asia – there was no room for dreams. Instead, we made do with what little we had: each other. You never knew when your time might come and you'd join the buried bodies in the sand, with only the searing heat as company.

  The line-up horn blared. Daydream over. I saw other seemingly lifeless bodies crawl out of their dust bowls and shuffle down the road towards the Market. Some climbed out of the trunks of old cars, others slid aside rusted roofing that they had piled against dead tree stumps, wh
ile others wedged their makeshift refuge between telephone poles. The street was full of hustling bodies within moments. I retracted my head and dug the tip of the tarp in between the wood panels. It wasn't pretty but it would have to do for now until I found a more permanent solution. I wiped the dirt that had accumulated over night from my eyes and looked at my wrist.

  The plastic bracelet read 9:27 a.m. I had slept in.

  Roll call happened at 10:00 every morning. With electrical sand storms a weekly occurrence, this was presented as the precinct's way of keeping track of everyone. In reality, it was the new obituary. Already eight people had gone missing the last two days. And after two hours with no sign of their return or possible survival, all their belongings went missing too. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Nothing lasted around here. No one even waited to see if you showed up or not. The unspoken motto was dead until proven otherwise, so to speak. No one ever bothered looking for bodies in the sand. We couldn't afford the energy. Plus, if someone had gone missing, the bodies did not last long with the wild dogs roaming around, or they were covered by a foot of sand within hours. That would be like digging for a toothpick in a sandbox. Impossible.

  The world was an unforgiving place. We did what we had to do to survive these days. And it wasn't pretty. The half-chewed dead man whose boots I pried off two months ago was evidence of that fact. The cataracts over his corneas had made his eyes look like grey fog as they drooped from their sockets, hanging from the optic nerve like spaghetti strings. The yellow secretion seeping from the pupils haunted my dreams even now. I couldn't wash the image of those eyes out of my memory. The retina had combusted from the internal heat. And the boils...I've never seen anything like it – as if the sky had poured acid all over him. One big bubble of pus, blisters, and melted skin. The boots were all that I managed to savage before the stench forced my retreat. The rest was ruined. Even the wild dogs hadn't bothered. That's when you knew it was bad.