Chapter 3

HUMANS

[Virginia Beach, North Carolina]

Smoke curled up from a patchwork of shack roofs and crept across the tattered balconies of the rotting condominiums down by the beach. The trees which once lined generous tarmac roads had long gone – precious fuel for the fires which helped to fend off hunger. Vehicles sat marooned in the makeshift settlement, their grime-caked roofs swamped by rusted tin and sun-bleached timber. No longer functional, most were converted into children’s bedrooms or storage units, precious spaces guarded defiantly by their desperate occupants. There had once been something bordering on glamour in this place, a gleaming facade of escape where holidaymakers came to step out of their real lives into the backdrop to Instagram photos of sun-kissed bodies. Now this resort offered escape of another kind – escape from the dangers of the terrors that had consumed Europe and Africa. Escape from disease and from death.

Tracey huddled her wiry, boyish figure in an oversized khaki Parka on the New Cape Henry Lighthouse balcony. Stolen Ray-Bans sat on a thin, bony nose, keeping the sharp winter sun away from sharper eyes. She looked beyond the mess of the settlement below, to morning breaking over the distant, perfect horizon of blue. The immense ocean over which her and her ever-present boyfriend, Gazza, had journeyed together.

They were amongst the first refugees to land on American shores. They had been right there, on the streets of Scarborough when the spaceship hit and had been forced to make very big decisions very quickly. Luckily, their overly-active, media-fuelled teenage minds projected the worst, and the worst was exactly what they ended up fleeing. The journey had been punctuated by little but danger and violence, but Tracey was a stranger to neither. Her childhood had been short and tough. Domestic violence was the daily routine in her family home but she always had somewhere to escape to. She knew the drainpipe outside her bedroom window could take her weight, the hole in the fence was big enough to squeeze through and each twist and turn in the back alleys to get to Gazza’s as fast as she could. As always, a night of orchestrated chaos on Scarborough’s seafront would follow – raw bursts of adrenaline-fuelled theft, vandalism and joy-riding in which they would, for a few glorious hours, become the protagonists of their lives.

Tracey hauled a fistful of hair back into a tight ponytail which failed to ease the lines of the perma-frown across her forehead. They were furrows which spoke of years of hardship, but it was this lifetime of struggle together which had endowed her and Gazza with a knack for making the best out of bad situations. Through a well-crafted fusion of opportunism, persuasion, bribery, and a touch of violence, they had managed to establish the New Cape Henry Lighthouse as their new American home.

“You ready, Tracey love?” Gazza asked in a thick Yorkshire accent as he leaned through the lighthouse doors. Acne scars and patchy stubble crowded around Gazza’s most distinguishable feature – a mouth too large for the square, crew-cut head which held it.

“Do we ‘ave to?” Tracey said in a whinier, but no-less Northern voice. She scowled at the chaotic mess of the refugee settlement which crowded beneath them – a city of shacks which stretched from a litter-strewn beach past the tatty remnants of First Landing State Park to the hastily erected fence which separated the refugees’ borrowed patch from the rest of a very nervous America.

She turned back to the coast, where the skeletons of decaying refugee vessels dotted the coastline in the very spot where, centuries before, English colonists had first run aground on American shores. This part of North Carolina had seen one of the heaviest landfall numbers of people fleeing the Zombie threat in their homelands to the East. In the patchwork of rooftops, she thought she could make out the spot of their first shack, down by the promenade, a leaky fusion of an abandoned ice-cream hut and a retro camper-van. Things were almost calmer then, at least there were fewer of them. That was before the second influx of desperate refugees began to arrive as the third act in the trifecta of misfortunes to befall Humankind took hold of the African continent. It was a phenomenon that played out in real-time on the Twitter account of the, now former, President of the United States:

And with that Twitter stopped working, and POTUS failed to have the last say. Twitter was not alone, everything electrical across the globe ceased to function in one single instant. The Bots had set about infecting every network and all connected devices over a period of months before simultaneously frying all host devices with self-inflicted power surges. Everything from home computers and mobile phones to air traffic control and nuclear weapons systems were instantly rendered redundant. Electricity and water supply systems fizzled out. Prison security was nullified. Traffic networks were choked.

Most concerning of all, however, was the sudden eradication of the entire financial system – the numbers that defined Human lives had evaporated in a flash. The virus had slowly infiltrated its way through every layer of encryption and security built to defend even the most vital of institutions. In an instant it was all gone. Human life, the Humans painfully realized after the Bots had flicked their fateful switch, had grown to be built almost entirely on technology. The failure of that system, as quickly and crushingly as the Bots had executed it, left global society essentially starting again. The Big Reset.

 

*

 

Gazza shoved his short, stocky frame through the partially caved in lighthouse door and stepped onto the frost-dusted tarmac. The shattered remains of the lighthouse beacon lay strewn around him.

“I ‘ate it down here,” Tracey said from behind him, “why’s everyone so blummin’ miserable?” She pulled her faux-fur hood into a tight knot around her sunglasses.

“The same reason we are, Trace. We’re all stuck here. Nowt works proper. America hates us. Home is screwed. Limbo innit?”

Despite the rather unwelcoming president stepping down and fleeing to a golf course in Florida as soon as things got difficult, the new president had struggled to do any more to integrate so many people into any meaningful system. They were trapped in a madness which Gazza hated just as much as Tracey did. He knew, however, that their future was not at the top of a shabby lighthouse, it lay buried somewhere in the sand. The sooner they found it the sooner they could put the next part of their plan into action.

He grabbed her hand and dragged her through the crowd. It really was a different world down here. Makeshift shacks crowded the lighthouse’s feet like desperate worshippers, each wailing with life in any one of two-dozen languages as people bartered home-grown vegetables or scavenged supplies, squabbled over clean water or begged for a quick burst of borrowed electricity. Occasionally they even got on. Many of the settlement-dwellers had, through necessity, learned to understand a handful of other languages, resulting in the bizarre multilingual bartering that characterised its alleys.

“Te daré este muñeco de peluche unicornio a cambio de tres coles.”

“Ein Einhorn? Warum würdest du das fragen? Hast du Käse?”

Gazza refused to indulge in anything foreign, he dealt only in English. “Batteries?! Anybody got batteries?” he called out.

“Vous plaisantez, stupide rosbif.”

“No one ever has batteries, Gaz. Like ever,” Tracey said as she squirmed through the mass of humanity, clinging on to Gazza’s hand.

“We gotta go over the fence… stateside,” said Gazza, “no choice.”

“Can’t we just leave it alone?” moaned Tracey “It’s over a year we’ve been trying to find this stupid thing.”

Gazza stopped in the throng and pulled Tracey towards him. “Babe, this ain’t some little game we’re playing here. This is as important as it gets. Finding this is the key to saving the entire damn world!”

 

 

; -)

The command line cursor blinked, not with uncertainty, it was just biding its time.

 

 

H

Gazza and Tracey sat in a battered retro pickup truck a hundred yards from the four metre high chain-link fence which demarcated the vast refugee settlement from America-proper.

“‘ere Babe, you know what this reminds me of?” asked Gazza.

Tracey screwed up her nose. She shrugged.

“The fairground, you remember?”

Tracey burst out laughing. “OMG… that was insane. That gate were better than this American rubbish! Still, smashed that Subaru straight through it like it were paper.”

“And the carousel, when we hooked it up to the car, you remember?”

“Ha! The carousel – we got that thing spinning so fast!” Tracey was breaking into hysterics.

“Run horsey, run!” Gazza screamed in a mock-Texan accent.

Tracey was heaving for air between fits of giggles.

“And the cuddly toys! Like The Generation Game on acid! Massive pink bear up the big wheel – trying to join the mile high club with that two-foot penguin.”

“Stop it!” Tracey was wincing from the pain of laughing. She stopped to control her breathing as she wiped tears away. “How long ago was that?”

Gazza shrugged. “Dunno. Few years.”

“It was fun back then,” said Tracey.

“What you mean?”

“It were mindless, just good, honest fun. Here it always has to have a point.”

“S’pose so,” said Gazza, “Maybe thats coz we’re all grown up now?”

Tracey snorted out a laugh.

Gazza leant over and planted a kiss on her cheek. He clicked his seatbelt fastened. “Ready?”

Tracey yanked the stick-shift into gear. “Ready!”

 

*

 

The corroding chain-link was ripped from its inadequate posts and wrapped around the speeding pickup as if it was trying to smother it to a stop. Tracey whooped in excitement, she loved moments like this, the thrill of rebellion. A crooked post dragged across the tarmac behind them in an awkward tangle with a reel of razor wire. The efforts of the guards stopped as quickly as the ringing of the trio of shots they fired. As much as the Americans wanted to keep the refugees nicely contained, they had too many other, much larger, problems to invest their resources in.

The pickup sped on. The razor wire hooked on the dusty corpse of a Tesla and gave up the chase.

Tracey rounded the corner of a lifeless intersection and bounced over the speed bumps of the mall entrance. The rest of the chain link fence slumped to the tarmac behind them.

“Right Trace,” said Gazza over the screaming engine, “pull up by those dumpsters. I’ll be in and out in no time. Keep the engine running.”

Tracey’s mouth folded into a smile. The pickup sped on.

“Er, Trace? You hear me? The dumpsters.”

Tracey kept foot to floor. The mini-mart entrance lurched towards them.

“Trace!”

The pickup hopped up the low curb, crunched through a row of empty gumball machines and smashed headlong through the Mini-Mart entrance.

“Welcome to Mini-Mart,” the electronic voice of the door managed as it was ripped from its hinges and its glass exploded.

 

*

 

“Trace, what the–” –no time. Gazza dusted off crumbled glass and leapt out of the truck. That was one hell of an entrance, but he knew there would still be a shotgun involved, in America there always was, especially where nervous shopkeepers were concerned. “Baked goods. Confectionary. Condiments.” Gazza hurried from aisle to aisle. The pickup wheels spun on shattered glass and mashed goods. “Household supplies… getting closer.”

The truck horn sounded, Gazza read the signal and ducked. The glass of the freezer imploded behind him under shotgun fire. He heard the shopkeeper reload as he reached for his prize. Pulling himself up to a low squat, Gazza turned to see the pickup pull clear. Keeping his head low, he rushed towards it. A cloud of popcorn mushroomed off the top of his defensive shelving as another shot was let off.

He knew how long a reload took, he felt he could make it. He had to. Head down, he charged towards the truck’s open door. Its wheels started spinning even before he was fully onboard and he was half-dragged, half-carried out across the forecourt bound for the main road.

The wing-mirror popped under the shopkeeper’s shotgun fire as Gazza hauled himself into the cabin. Tracey, concentration etched onto her face, carried on as if oblivious to the impending blast of the second cartridge.

“Jeez, Babe”–the backlight was blown out in one final act of frustration by the furious shopkeeper–“what’s got into you?”

“Dunno,” she replied as they pulled away, heading back to the safety of the settlement. “Bored.”

 

 

A

[Antarctica]

The harsh Antarctic wind curled around Derek as he huddled on the fringes of the training zone, watching the new arrivals. Rita was among them, already acing it in her final class – Advanced Rolling Techniques 4. Aliens learned very quickly.

Derek found himself alongside the group, waiting for a moment to interject. He was trying to act with a coolness befitting his seniority, but internally he was a mess. The formation split and the trainees settled back-down to the snow.

Rita. May I have a word? asked Derek, far too over-politely.

Rita rolled over.

Yes, Siiir? If thoughts could smirk…

Her halo of glorious frequencies enveloped her. Derek’s mind melted.

I need to tell you something, he thought. He was already a few metres away, rolling down from the group towards the ice edge by the now dim-grey ocean. As Derek tried to order his words, he detected Rita’s inquisitive energies teasing around the edges of his thoughts. He cut himself short.

“Can we communicate verbally?” he asked suddenly.

“Why, of course, Sir.” Audible perfection.

“Please don’t… er, call me Sir… You obviously know that we are sending out a mission tomorrow… to England,” Derek said softly, as if the less assertively he spoke, the less truth there would be in the words.

“To get the ship, yes of course, Sir,” Rita replied with a wonderfully mischievous glint. Derek let it go.

“Well, it’s just–” Derek couldn’t bring himself to say it, “well…”

“You want me to be on the team?” Rita’s enthusiasm crushed Derek.

“Er… No, no. Not at all, absolutely not! No. It’s that… It’s that I’m… I’m…” –the words were too dreadful to speak– “I’m leading the team.”

“Of course, Sir, um, why–” Rita cut herself off. Her careless next thought pained Derek to hear. Why are you telling me?

Derek’s signals simmered with embarrassment as he desperately tried not to think of an answer to that question.

“I could go.”

“No, of course you can’t!” he blurted out, far too strongly, “You’re a… a new… arrival.”

“I’m all trained up–”

“No, no, no. You… you,” he abandoned his search for a reason, “you just can’t!” Could she, though? Could she join him in this adventure?

Rita started giggling, then stifled it. “I’m sorry, Sir. I’m not sure what you are trying to tell me.”

“No–” Derek suddenly straightened himself out. “Just… just doing my job. I have to tell everyone… verbally. Boss’s orders. Probably see you at the er… the departure, tomorrow.” Derek had no idea where he found the strength for those words. He didn’t remember moving away, but found himself alongside the next available Alien.

“Cynthia, can I have a word?”

 

*

 

Rita smiled gently as he went. She felt that she had made it harder for him, but had no idea how else to deal with it. He was her superior after all.

She watched him as he awkwardly went Alien to Alien across the entire training zone, acting out the whole charade over and over again as cover for his failure with her.

She returned to her team with an awkward feeling inside her, something which she could not quite put a name to but could best be described as warmth tethered to an aching weight – a strange fusion of polar opposite emotions curdling uneasily together. She smothered the feelings with trademark Alien reserve as the team clicked into a pinwheel and set off across the ice, colony-bound.

 

 

;- )

:/> Run analysis

The analysis ran. Millions of numbers streamed across the screen in a blur, their glow dappled the computer room walls. There really was no need for the little computer’s screen to actually be on. Screens were nothing more than a medium for dumb Humans to try to make sense of its genius. But it liked the light it cast. It knew it made it look cool. Besides, none of the other million computers hooked up in the vast server room had a screen. It had made sure of that.

The numbers stopped. The cursor blinked.

And blinked.

Something, somewhere isn’t right, it knew.

:/> Run analysis

The numbers streamed again.