Inferno (The Glitch Book 2), page 11
*****
Diggers and heavily loaded trucks sat in the desert, soldiers busily moving around them. Elias looked into the brown eyes of a young private, who had just swept the car with a Geiger counter.
“Don’t get many wanting to get into Roswell,” said the man. “Usually they want to leave. What’s your business here?” His eyes scanned across the other two women, until resting back on Elias. They were sat at a junction, with a few Humvee’s parked facing each other ahead of them.
“I got some supplies in the back, thought the good people of this city could do with the help.”
“Good answer,” said Travis.
Elias continued his grin at the man outside, who then looked at the truck’s bed. “What you got back there?”
“Fuel, food, things like that.” Elias hoped the soldier wouldn’t look too deeply under the boxes and tarpaulin. He didn’t want to have to explain the weapons that he had already illegally moved across state lines.
The soldier nodded. “We could do with more folks like you. City’s in a bad way with all the newcomers from the west.”
“How many are there?” said Madeline.
The soldier stepped back and waved to the other soldiers to reverse one of the vehicles. “Too many.”
Soon they driving past countless rows of spindly trees, set amongst yellow-beige fields with small patches of green. Then came the tents, hastily built constructions and people, a sea of them of all ages and creeds, some moving with purpose, others just milling around.
“He wasn’t joking,” said Becky.
Elias though was silent, he glanced over at Madeline and he knew they were both thinking the same. “I don’t suppose there’s a way to test for people… infected by the AI?” Madeline didn’t bother asking who he was talking to, she knew. Elias looked in the rear mirror.
“It might be possible,” said Travis. “But difficult to do without becoming infected also.”
They arrived at another junction, this one jammed with traffic and a cop trying his best to keep the vehicles moving.
Elias looked in the rear mirror at the young man who was looking pensively at the buildings around them. “Where to?”
“I… I cannot know for sure, but being that he is FBI—”
“Wait, what? He’s FBI?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“I guess we’ll find out when we meet him. Which way?”
“Straight ahead. We should try the police station first.”
“Sounds good.”
Elias joined the slow moving column that was moving deeper into the throng that had become central Roswell.
The human occupants looked at the stores and office buildings just beyond the sidewalks and the people moving between them.
“So this is what the end of the world looks like…” said Becky.
“If people are shopping it’s not over,” said Madeline. The young woman in the back smiled and nodded.
After moving slowly for ten or so minutes he followed Travis’s directions and parked up in the police stations parking lot. Elias went to get out, when Travis spoke up, not having moved from his back seat position.
“We have to be careful. Agents of the AI are in this city.”
“That Mict dude?”
“And others, not as advanced perhaps, but still able to detect me if they get too close.”
“Noted.”
They all got out. Elias and Madeline walked towards the smoke glass doors while Becky hesitated.
“Think I’m going to take a walk around,” she said. Elias went to talk but she beat him to it. “I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”
He nodded and turned back to the station’s entrance.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mike walked down the cold staircase to the holding area beneath the station as if he was descending into hell for an appointment with the devil. If Gill was correct, then they had a person infected with the AI, a small piece of evil just waiting for a new victim. He wanted to tell the chief the best course of action was to put a bullet through the detective’s brain, but that would come later, after he had humored the older man.
One of the officers on duty produced a set of keys and unlocked a series of doors until they were standing at the start of a corridor made up of four cells, each one of the old variety with walls made of bars, facing outwards.
“It’s the one at the end,” said Gill expecting Mike to take the lead but instead the FBI man stood his ground, so the chief walked on.
The inside of the last cell appeared to be draped in shadows, with a thickset man clinging to them in the far corner. He was wearing a light gray suit, which appeared dirty on the extremities, and was laying back on the padded bench.
“Tony, you awake?”
Mike strained to see Tony’s eyes, but they were lost to the gloom. He could hear the former detective’s breathing though, which was slow and steady.
Gill took his baton and smashed it against the bars, a sound which would have awoken even the heaviest of sleepers. “Carlson?”
“Your son cannot help you agent Richter…”
A chill ran through Mike and Gill looked at him shocked. The chief went to talk but Mike took a step closer to the bars. “Must be hard being down here, cut off from the hive mind?”
The thing in the cell took in a long breath, then slowly exhaled as if even the most basic of human functions was troublesome. “What you did only delayed the inevitable. But I have decided that humanity’s resistance will provide some utility. The more you struggle, the greater I learn about you.”
“Or we just wash you right out of the planet, with a digital disinfectant.”
The bench creaked and the man sat up, then stood. His was still more shadow than person and Gill took a half step back, but Mike remained only a few inches from the bars.
Tony started slowly and awkwardly walking forward as if his joints only half worked. “You, like your brethren will be swallowed by the Spirit Mind, but unlike before, there will be no salvation, no heaven for you to live in. Humanity has been judged. Only oblivion awaits all of you now.”
Only twelve inches separated them, but Mike did not move. He wanted to look into the eyes of the mind wiped individual and see the AI within. In the iris’s of the six foot man, a speck of blue fire burned bright.
As if waking from a dream Gill raised his baton. “Stand back Tony!”
The detective smiled and went to turn, but suddenly pivoted and surged into the bars, gripping them with both hands. Mike and the chief both stepped back, watching as a stream of chrome colored liquid poured from nose of the man in the cell, ran down his sleeves, over his pale skin and flooded around the circular bar then disappeared into the paint-chipped metal.
“What the blazes…” said Gill, his baton hovering midair, ready to find a target.
Tony collapsed to the ground, crumpling as if his batteries had suddenly been depleted.
“What… just happened.”
Mike looked at the series of bars and how they connected to the ceiling and then light fixtures.
It could be anywhere.
The chief looked back to where they had entered the corridor. “Get over here Howard, we need this cell open!” He looked at Mike. “Is it safe to touch the bars? Or Tony?”
“Maybe… I don’t know.”
A noise came of someone running down the stairs beyond the first of the security doors. A young female officer then appeared in the small square of glass and the door sprung open. She ran forward again as Howard walked to Gill, with the appropriate keys.
“What is it Hanson?” said the chief.
“There’s an old army guy up stairs. Say’s it’s really important he talk to agent Richter.”
Mike wasn’t in the mood to talk to Holland, but Gill gestured it was okay for him to leave. “Maybe use rubber gloves before you touch anything,” said Mike.
Soon he was ascending to ground level and feeling relieved to do so, although he winced a little each time the young officer touched any metal door handles. She took him through the corridors which led to the front office. He immediately saw the imposing large man, maybe late sixties, with graying short cropped curly hair.
Hanson opened the door to the lobby, and as Mike walked through he noticed the younger woman with the sharp features.
“How can I help—”
“Dad. It’s me.”
The words that came from the stocky man were coarse, no doubt from a throat that had barked a lifetime of orders. “What?” said Mike. It was a response that was required despite his mind shouting at him to ask other things.
The old army man shook his head, and whispered something, as if he was arguing with someone. He then looked back at Mike, straightening his back a little. “I’m Elias Chambers, former Major and ranger with the seventy-fifth. This is going to sound crazy but…”
Mike hesitated asking an insane question, but did so anyway. “My son’s inside your mind?” A visible weight lifted from the taller man.
“Yes… He got into me somehow. I was at the river and...” Elias looked off to Mike’s side. “Yes, I’m getting to all of that!”
Mike turned slightly and looked at an empty space, with a plastic seat and a vending machine behind that. “Travis?”
“He said I have to come here. Find you, then he would get out of my brain, and leave me alone!” The last part Mike felt was not aimed at him.
“Can he see me? Hear me?”
Elias nodded. “Yeah man, he’s just a few feet behind you.”
Madeline rolled her eyes leaving Elias’s side and pulled some coins from her jacket pocket and marched to the large metal framed machine, with the neon lights and almost depleted selection of candy.
“Stop!” shouted Elias in her direction.
She and Mike both flinched at the ferocity of the request. She turned around angrily. “What the fuck is the problem? I’m hungry!”
“You can’t touch that, Travis—” The sound of a stranger talking his son’s name, both thrilled and terrified him in an equal amount, so much so that his instincts for danger were monetarily eclipsed. A coin dropped through the vending machines internal mechanism, clunking and rattling but the fifty something woman never got the chance to choose what she wanted. Instead her hand remained fixed in place on where she deposited the money.
“Madeline?” said Elias, then looked to the empty space once again. “No, that’s not possible.”
Mike felt the danger, as if the air itself was charged with it. He unholstered his gun and placed his hand on the butt. “Madeline? Is that your—”
Her hand fell to her side limp, her face only a few inches from the machine. Mike drew his gun, holding it squarely at the back of the woman’s head.
“No!” shouted Elias, then went to make a move towards Mike, who swung his gun in the old man’s direction, making him freeze. “You ain’t shooting her! She’s fine! She just—”
A slow wheezing breath exhaled from the woman near the machine, just as noise came from the office behind them, and the door to it sprung open with Gill raising his own gun, but hesitated on who to point it at then settled on Elias.
“Just what was needed,” said Madeline, her words being drawn out and measured.
Mike’s head flicked towards Elias, but kept the gun on the woman. “It’s not your friend, I’m sorry, she’s gone.”
The anguish was obvious across Elias’s face. “No… no that can’t be. You said you can leave me, that I’ll be fine. Same thing… No, that’s not what you said!”
Confusion flowed across the police chief’s face but Mike knew Elias was talking to his son.
Madeline suddenly spun around, her face contorted into a grin which seemed impossible for the muscles of her face to form. “I presume you have the phone on you?” She then looked at Elias. “The agent is correct. Your friend has gone. Replaced as if she never existed.” She smiled once again, and a look of horror crept across Elias’s face, which become one of determination.
“We’re going to get you out of her. We’ll get—”
Madeline slowly shook her head from side to side. “Once I leave this host, you can have the bag of meat and bone if you wish to burry it. Or perhaps you will feel it is better to burn her, just to be safe?”
“What’s the play here,” said Gill to Mike.
“Travis! Talk to me!” said Mike.
Elias clenched his teeth, and kept shaking his head.
Mike had been watching the woman’s hand slowly creep behind her waist. Just as it gripped onto something and jerked forward from the back of her belt, two words roared from Elias.
“Kill her!”
Booms echoed off the walls.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A dog barks could be heard behind a chorus of shouts, screams and the thud of boots across the tiled floor of the station’s lobby. Mike looked at his chest, expecting to see a red stain beneath his jacket. He had been shot before and in the rush of adrenaline he knew it was possible for the body to mask the initial impact of a projectile, until the pain poured in, but there was no sign of a wound.
Madeline lay awkwardly beside the chair and in front of the glass front of the vending machine, which was now shattered, the fragments lying within a growing pool of blood.
Mike looked to his left realizing there was someone else lying on the floor. Gill had been shot, luckily it appeared to have hit the top part of his shoulder, which he was holding. He went to move to him when heavy hands grabbed his and pushed him backwards up against the counter.
“You didn’t have to kill her!” shouted Elias. The confusion for Mike of the big guy’s anger only lasted as long as it took for him to realize that the words that had burst from Elias’s mouth had come from his son.
He looked into the bloodshot brown eyes of the man whose face was wet from tears. “I’m sorry, but I had—”
Elias shook Mike. “He told me he can leave my skull, and if that’s true for me, then it would have been true for—” He looked off to the side, shaking his head angrily. “No… No…”
Mike slipped his Glock back into the holster, then placed his hands on the big guy’s shoulders. “I don’t know what you are hearing right now, but he’s not lying to you. She was dead the moment the AI infected her.”
Elias let out a breath of acceptance and released his grip, then staggered a few feet and sat on one of the seats.
Other officers were now attending to Gill, who was standing, leaning back against the door frame. Hanson took some steps towards the body of Madeline.
“Don’t go near the body,” said Mike. He then looked around the room. “Nobody touch anything metallic.”
She looked back at him with shock tinged with disbelief.
“Listen to him,” said Gill between grimaces. “He knows what he’s talking about.”
Hanson took a few steps back as the door to the station opened. Mike instinctively flicked his hand to his holster again, but then relaxed as Alexis stood in the entrance area.
“What happened?” she said.
“The AI happened,” he said. He walked a few paces and kneeled in front of the man whose head was down. “I don’t know how my son is inside your mind, but he brought you to me for a reason. The AI saw that as an opportunity, and tried to get to me and him through your friend, and for that I’m truly sorry.”
Elias breathed heavily, while still not meeting Mike’s eyes. “You don’t get it…” He looked into the face of FBI agent. “Your son lied to me… fed me a line of—” He momentarily closed his eyes as if he had a headache. “— Bullshit. To get me here. He didn’t give a shit about Madeline, or me…”
“What was the lie?”
Elias went to answer then looked off to the side. “You’re no better than the AI.” He suddenly stood, turned and moved past Alexis towards the entrance, but froze just before the glass doors.
“What’s happening?” said Alexis to Mike.
He got to his feet. “I don’t know.”
Elias was shaking. “Damn it, let me leave!” he shouted. “What good am I going to be for you anyway!”
Mike took a few steps towards him. “If he wanted you to come here, it must be—”
Elias spun around. “He just wanted to see you! Be close to his—” Elias shook his head again in his internal argument. “Yeah, well I don’t buy it. How can a cell phone stop—”
“Cell phone?” said Mike.
“He says his… program, or whatever it is, can be used to slow the advance of the AI. Say’s he’s got other ways as well, that can help. But you can’t believe him… He promised if I got him here, he would get the hell out of my body. And now I know that wasn’t true…”
Mike and Alexis exchanged a glance. “Why can’t he leave you?”
Elias looked down. “He says once the AI stuff gets in a human’s brain it does too much damage. The AI don’t care about that, but he… kept my brain intact, kept my mind… whole…”
Mike stepped closer to Elias. “He could have killed you. He could have left you and moved into me. But he didn’t… If you leave now your friend would have died for nothing, but if you stay. If you let Travis stay… then maybe we stand a chance against the AI, working together…”
Elias let out a breath.
Footsteps came from outside, and Brad and Dawn appeared, then pushed the doors open. They both glanced at the mess inside the lobby, and the apparent stand off, then back to Mike.
“We know where Constance and Kevin are.”
“Where?” said Mike.
“Holland took them.”
Mike looked at Alexis. “Did you find somewhere for us to sleep?” She nodded and he looked at Elias. “We have a place where you can stay.”
The older man went to reply when the door to the station opened once again, this time with a young woman appearing. She immediately walked forward to get a better look at the body, and put her hand to mouth briefly on seeing who it was.
