Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 Read online

  I see the look on Maria’s face. It’s right about now that she realizes how truly screwed we are.

  Apart from our lack of water, we also have a distinct shortage of food. Our supplies are ridiculously, dangerously low. Other than Sarah’s precious bottles of water, she also had a few cans of food. Baked beans. Peaches. Canned tuna. This is all the food that Sarah had been carrying in her backpack when we escaped from the Fortress. None of it sounded appealing, even though I was starving.

  And weapons? Forget about it.

  We have one gun with one magazine.

  Two EMP grenades.

  This is not enough to defend ourselves with.

  At some point, we will need to find a town and scavenge for supplies. We will need to find something.

  Water first.

  Food second.

  Weapons.

  Shelter.

  I am reminded of the mad soldier who greeted Maria and myself when we had unknowingly arrived at the Fortress. The mad soldier had been exiled to the desert by General Spears. This was his punishment for questioning the authority of the General. As a result, he had suffered heat stroke and dehydration. He had suffered insanity brought on by pressure and isolation.

  There is nothing in the desert…

  He had buried himself in the red dust, in the dirt, he had set a trap in the small chance that someone, anyone, would stumble across his hiding place. What kind of headspace does a person need to be in to do something like that? How far gone? How desperate?

  And I can’t help but wonder if this will be us in a few days’ time.

  Or maybe we are already there.

  Desperate.

  Gone.

  No way back.

  While I’m thinking about water and food and whether or not we’ll die of thirst and heat stroke and insanity, Kenji stops suddenly and I almost walk up the back of him.

  He tells us to stop.

  “Why?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s something out there.”

  “Where?”

  “On the horizon.”

  Kenji has amazing eye sight. But I can’t see a damn thing. No one else can.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Don’t know.”

  Kim puts her hand over her bruised face, shielding her eyes from the setting sun. “Where? What are you talking about?”

  Kenji points at the horizon, to the south. He is pointing dead ahead.

  “I don’t see anything,” Jack says.

  I finally see something, but it could just be a heat mirage. I look closer. The heat waves give the impression of movement. The whole thing shimmers and distorts. The optical illusion reminds me of a nano-swarm.

  “Trust me,” Kenji says. “There’s something there.”

  I believe him.

  “Please don’t tell me it’s infected people,” Jack says.

  “Or a nano-swarm,” Maria adds.

  Sarah reaches into her backpack and retrieves an EMP grenade. She hands it to me. “We’ve only got two of these left.”

  “No,” Kenji answers. “I don’t think it’s a nano-swarm, or infected people. It could be a car. A Humvee. It could be a tank.”

  “Might have supplies,” Kim says.

  “What do we do?” Maria asks. “Do we go around it? Do we avoid it?”

  “I think we need to check it out,” Kenji says.

  Maria doesn’t like this idea at all. She tightens her grip on Jack. “And what if there are infected people hiding inside? What if there’s a goddamn nano-swarm?”

  Kenji thinks it over. “If there are infected people inside whatever the hell this thing is, and they can get free, they’ll eventually come running after us. It’s better if we get the drop on them. I’d much rather take them out first. It’s better than having them sneak up on us in the middle of the night.”

  Kenji answers Maria’s questions calmly and methodically. He understands why she is afraid. She is afraid because if we get attacked, Jack won’t be able to run.

  “And what if it’s a nano-swarm?” she asks.

  “We’ve got EMP grenades,” Kenji says. “If there’s a nano-swarm close by, we use the grenades. This usually causes the nano-swarm to disperse. It usually causes them to take evasive action.”

  Yeah, that’s what usually happens. But there’s a first time for everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if the nano-swarms had started to figure out how to completely avoid, or even survive an EMP blast. And there’s always the chance of human error. There’s always the chance that I’d completely screw up. Maybe I’d drop the grenade. Maybe I’d throw it in the wrong direction. Who knows?

  I suddenly start to feel nervous. I suddenly start to feel pressure.

  “Kim is right,” Kenji says. “Whatever it is, it could have supplies. We need to check this out. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up. But Jack, you might want to keep your distance. I think you should stay back, just until we know it’s safe.”

  Jack doesn’t argue.

  So we keep walking, and slowly the object comes into view. It starts out as a shimmering dark blob. The heatwaves make it look bigger than it actually is. At one point, the thing appears to tower over the horizon. But the closer we get, the smaller it gets, and the more solid it becomes. For a second I think that maybe it really is a nano-swarm. But it appears to be stationary. It isn’t moving.

  It begins to take shape, until finally, it makes sense in my mind.

  “It’s a helicopter,” Kenji says. “A Blackhawk.”

  “Are you sure?” Kim asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know it’s a Blackhawk?” Sarah asks.

  “I just do,” he says, turning to Kim. “Give me the gun.”

  Kim hands over our one and only weapon to Kenji. He checks the magazine. “Stay close,” he says. “Stay behind me.”

  Chapter 2

  We move quickly and silently towards the chopper. Jack and Maria hang back. I have given them an EMP grenade just in case.

  The rest of us are moving up, directly behind Kenji. Kenji has the gun armed and ready. He is holding it with two hands. Finger on the trigger. The safety is off.

  He is not taking any chances.

  The chopper is covered in a large, dark green tarp. But I know it is not just a tarp. It’s an invisibility cloak. Just like the one Daniel’s team used to cover and conceal their camp with, back when they needed to hide from the military and from everyone and everything else. And just like that invisibility cloak, this one had long run out of power as well. Or maybe it was just broken.

  We move in close to the chopper. Kenji slows down. It appears that the chopper’s nose is partially buried in the ground, like it has nose-dived. Kenji pulls back the cloak, revealing a scene of carnage, a scene of destruction and chaos.

  The chopper had crash landed. The rotor blades are crumpled. The windows of the cockpit have shattered.

  The pilot is dead.

  The co-pilot is dead.

  There are two dead Evo Agents in the back. Their NBC suits did nothing to protect them.

  There is one other passenger. He has a black hood over his head. He is, or rather was, a prisoner. And now he is a dead man. There is a long and sharp piece of metal, part of the helicopter; that has pierced his stomach.

  No one could’ve survived this.

  Jack and Maria have joined us. And Jack says, “Is that who I think it is?”

  I’m not following. I’m too distracted by the dead bodies, by the scene of carnage in front of me. By the smell of it.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “Who is it?”

  Jack points at the prisoner. He doesn’t say anything. He just points.

  The person wearing the black hood, the passenger, the prisoner, they only have one hand. The other has been hacked off.

  It was Doctor Hunter.

  Was.

  The parasite is finally dead.

  For some reason I take a deep breath. And then I realize I ha
d been holding my breath. And then I exhale slowly, and I feel relief. I don’t know why I feel this way.

  I scan the scene before me. I take it all in.

  The dead pilots.

  The dead Evo Agents.

  I look closer. Their necks have been pierced and sliced open, torn open, ripped open.

  This chopper is brand new. State of the art.

  Why did it crash?

  How did it crash?

  Relief quickly gives way to fear…

  Doctor Hunter was a prisoner. The Evo Agents came for him. They told us, lied to us, that they had no room in their chopper, in this chopper, that they couldn’t extract the rest of us. They told us to stay put, that a rescue was coming.

  Their other prisoner was the man in the gas mask.

  Doctor Kumar Singh.

  Where is Doctor Kumar Sing?

  Where is the man in the gas mask?

  Our primary objectives are still at large…

  The recon team, the extraction team, they never made it back.

  My exhausted brain finally catches on. We are standing around the wreckage of a state of the art Blackhawk helicopter. We are standing over five dead bodies. Four soldiers. One doctor, a prisoner.

  We are one prisoner short.

  We are shocked into silence.

  Where is Doctor Kumar Singh?

  “This is the rescue team,” I whisper.

  Kenji looks at me. “What?”

  “This is the rescue team. They came for the man in the gas mask. And Doctor Hunter.”

  I point to the body, to the passenger with a spear sized piece of shrapnel sticking out of his stomach. “Jack is right. That’s Doctor Hunter.”

  “No way,” Kim says. “How did this happen?”

  The recon team never returned. They never made it back to base.

  “He did this,” I say. “The man in the gas mask. He escaped. He crashed this chopper. He killed the Evo Agents. He killed the pilots. He’s still out there.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Sarah asks.

  Jack fills Sarah in on the man in the gas mask. On everything that he has done. On all the chaos and death he has caused. He tells her that despite all the killing, despite the fact that he had caused the outbreak, caused an Extinction Level Event, the company still considered him a high priority, they still considered him a very valuable target. This is why the company had sent in a special team to rescue him. YoshidaCorp wanted him alive, they wanted to capture him, they wanted to imprison, instead of kill.

  Or maybe they still wanted to use him.

  But the man in the gas mask is a ghost. He is a demon. And he cannot be caught.

  He cannot be caged.

  And I’m starting to believe he cannot be killed.

  “There’s no way the man in the gas mask killed two Evo Agents,” Maria says. “He was handcuffed. He was dying. There’s no way.”

  “Look at their necks,” I say. “Their throats have been cut. I don’t know how he did it, but he got the jump on them. He strangled them, slit their throats.”

  “These soldiers,” Sarah says, looking at their protective NBC suits. “They’re not regular soldiers, are they?”

  Kenji shakes his head. “No. They’re Evo Agents.”

  “From the company,” Sarah says, catching on, piecing bits of a puzzle together. She must’ve heard the rumors.

  “Not even a super soldier can survive a helicopter crash,” Jack says. “I wonder how high up they were when they came down.”

  “I don’t think the crash killed them,” Kim says.

  “What do you mean?”

  She points to their necks, their suits. “Rebecca is right. Look. Their throats have been slit. That’s not from the crash. Someone did that to them. Someone bled them out.”

  I notice what appear to be black scorch marks on their NBC suits. Kenji notices as well. He then looks over his shoulder at the ground surrounding the chopper. Scattered all over the place are bullet casings.

  “There was a struggle here,” Kenji says. “The soldiers, or the pilots, they’ve been shot at. Close range. They were shot with a high powered assault rifle.”

  “That wouldn’t have killed them,” I say, remembering the time I was shot square in the chest while wearing an NBC suit. The force of the bullet knocked me off my feet, it crushed the air from my lungs. But it did not kill me. The suit saved my life.

  “No, the suits are bullet proof,” Kenji says. “But at this range, the shot would’ve stunned them. It would’ve knocked them off their feet. Assuming they were shot with an assault rifle.”

  “And then he would’ve slit their throats,” I say. “Or maybe he slit their throats mid-air. Shot the pilots. Crashed the chopper on purpose.” I’m talking to myself, picturing in my mind the sequence of events carried out by the mad man.

  Jack moves towards the cockpit. “The pilots have been shot,” he says. “They’ve been shot in the back several times.”

  “So, wait a minute,” Maria says. “The man in the gas mask… he’s still alive? He’s still out there?”

  I nod my head slowly. “Yes. He escaped. He was waiting to be rescued from the Fortress. He was waiting for the perfect time…”

  Again, I’m thinking out loud.

  I remember back to the Fortress. The man in the gas mask was handcuffed. He was a prisoner. But he was calm. Like a psychotic Zen Master. He didn’t care that he was handcuffed. Or blindfolded. He didn’t care that he had been stabbed.

  He didn’t care that he was slowly bleeding to death.

  He knew they would come for him.

  He knew they would underestimate him.

  He was waiting for the perfect time to strike.

  He waited until he was out, until he was free from the Fortress.

  He waited until he was back in the desert, until he was mid-air.

  He waited for the Evo Agents to drop their guards… just a little.

  And then he made his move.

  He crashed the chopper. He took his chances.

  He rolled the dice.

  And he survived.

  He got his hands on a weapon.

  A rifle.

  A knife.

  He slaughtered the Evo Agents. Executed the pilots.

  And now he has disappeared into the desert, like a ghost.

  I turn to the horizon and my heart beats just a little bit faster knowing that he is out there somewhere.

  The architect of the apocalypse.

  Creator and destroyer of worlds, of life.

  “I can’t believe Doctor Hunter is dead,” Maria says. “He survived so much. He got out of North Sydney…”

  “Who is Doctor Hunter?” Sarah asks.

  “He’s one of the people responsible for… for everything,” I answer. “He helped create the Oz virus.”

  Maria motions towards the body with her head. “Are we even sure that’s him?”

  I point to his severed hand. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  Kenji reaches forward and removes the hood just to make sure the one armed man is Doctor Hunter, to make sure that he is actually dead.

  And I am right.

  It is Doctor Hunter.

  But I am wrong.

  Because he is not dead.

  He opens his eyes slightly.

  His lips move.

  And he speaks.

  He says, “I was wrong. I was so wrong. You should’ve killed him. You should’ve put a bullet in his brain.”

  Chapter 3

  Everyone jumps back. We jump back because this is a normal, completely human reaction to seeing a dead person come back to life. Even after all this time. Even after everything that we have seen.

  Doctor Hunter is about to say something else, but when he opens his mouth he coughs and spits up blood.

  He is dying.

  Finally. After all this time, the parasite is dying.

  And I think to myself that maybe he is dying because there is no one left alive, no life for him
to cling to out here in the desert.

  And I wonder what knowledge dies with him.

  What secrets die with him?

  “What have we done?” he whispers. “What did we do?”

  “You know what you did,” I say. “You unleashed hell on the world. A plague.”

  “No, we didn’t unleash it. We created it. We designed it. But we didn’t unleash it. He unleashed it.”

  He’s talking about the man in the gas mask.

  Doctor Kumar Singh.

  The devil.

  “What will we do?” he whispers to himself. “How do we live? What happens next?”

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “We didn’t know who he was,” Doctor Hunter says, ignoring my question. “No one knew.”

  “Where is he?” I ask again, louder.

  “He controlled everything. He controlled us. Tricked us. He played us for fools.”

  “How?” Kim asks. “How the hell could one man fool everyone? How could he fool the military and the company? How could he trick Generals and doctors and research scientists?”

  “Because he is smart. Smarter than anyone I have ever known. But it’s not just his intelligence. He is driven. He wants this. He wants the world to end. He wants this world to end.”

  The man in the gas mask kept talking about a new world. A better world.

  Is this it?

  Is this the world he wanted?

  “This was his goal,” Doctor Hunter continues. “His dream, his vision. And he pursued it with the intensity and single minded determination of a mad man. And he’s done it. He has accomplished everything that he had ever hoped to accomplish. It’s over. And he won’t stop. He can’t be stopped.”

  Doctor Hunter reaches out for Kenji with his one good hand. He grabs Kenji’s shirt and pulls him closer. “I tried to help. I tried to stop it. I tried to contain it. You have to believe me. Please. Please believe me. I tried. But there’s no stopping this. There’s no killing it. There’s no killing something that can’t be killed. No killing something that is already dead.”

  “How did he get away?” I ask

  “He… he is too good, too ruthless. And now he is gone. Now he is a ghost.”

  It sounds like Doctor Hunter has lost his mind. And I can’t blame him.

  “We ran simulations,” he whispers. “It showed us everything. It showed us the end. When it’s over, when it’s all said and done, the Oz virus will wipe out ninety-nine percent of the Earth’s population. I don’t know what will happen to the survivors, to those unfortunate souls. But I do know they’ll be scared. I do know they’ll be hungry.”