Zero hour part 5 countdo.., p.2
Zero Hour Part 5: Countdown, page 2
“Relax, Shep. I traded it in for the new model.”
“I liked the old model. More importantly, where did you get it?”
“We have a lot to discuss. Gather the others.”
A tremor develops in her voice.
“I can’t let you in, Sir,”
Wilkins raises his rifle, aiming directly at Alex. He looks shit scared. Alex has already begun lowering his arms, and quickly raises them again, shaking his hands to emphasise his compliance.
“Whoa. It’s me, Shep. What’s going on?”
“Where is she?”
“Where’s who, Shep?”
Something isn’t right.
“Where’s Sarah?”
How could she know?
“Alex, you need to get out of there. Something’s wrong.”
This isn’t going as planned. Alex scratches his head to signal that he understands and slowly backs away from Sheppard and Wilkins.
“Sarah’s dead Shep. She died in the Tower. You know that.”
Wilkins looks concerned and walks closer to Sheppard.
“You okay Shep? It’s Alex, Sarah’s gone,” he says.
“No she isn’t.”
Without even looking at him, she grabs Wilkins by the throat, lifting him almost a foot off the ground. He drops the rifle and frantically grabs her arm trying to free himself, flailing wildly, but it’s no use.
“Sheppard! What are you doing? Stand down, that’s an order!”
“WHERE IS SHE?”
She turns to face Wilkins as he fights for breath, both hands grabbing her arm, desperately trying to free himself, his skin quickly changing colour, his pleading eyes bulging fiercely as he tries to kick free with his dangling legs, but she’s not letting go.
You jump from the watchtower. It’s a twenty foot drop and you land with a dusty thud, and sprint towards the base. Al follows suit. You’re not going to reach them in time.
“Al, you get Alex. I’ll handle Sheppard.”
Al breaks from your side and heads in Alex’s direction. You increase speed as Wilkins’ body begins to go limp. Thirty seconds later, you’re standing in front of them.
“Sheppard, please, stop. Let him go. I’m here. It’s me.”
She looks at you with a mixture of sadness and confusion, still not relaxing her grip on Wilkins. He doesn’t have much time left.
“Sarah?”
She begins to cry.
“What’s happening to me?”
“I’m not sure, please just let him go. We can work this out. It’s me. I’m still me.”
Her expression changes, and the crying face transforms to a smile. Except it’s not a good smile, more of a sneer.
“You certainly are, Captain.”
She twists Wilkins’ neck. It makes an audible cracking noise as she discards him like a rag doll in the direction of the others, so quickly not even you have time to react. Alex screams in protest, but Sheppard takes little notice.
There’s something in the way she uttered that last sentence.
It can’t be.
No.
“Bingo!”
CHAPTER THREE
You can’t move. The sheer horror of hearing that word again brings it all back. Such a simple, whimsical word normally, and now it evokes so much pain and suffering.
Al stands beside Alex, who has dropped to his knees, unable to comprehend what’s happening. As tough as you have all become over the years, sometimes there’s no other possible reaction to something like this.
“Well, Sarah—”
“I swear to God, Bentley—if you say “We meet again,” I will disassemble myself.”
Bentley grins, but that trademark grin doesn’t belong to him.
“Where’s Sheppard?” you ask.
“Oh she’s still here. I’m not quite finished with her yet.”
“You know, I didn’t want to say anything, but you really have a penchant for ladies’ bodies. You sure there wasn’t some other underlying reason for your psychosis?”
“Very funny. But you see—”
“Ah, whatever. Spare me the Scooby Doo episode Doc, I’ve already been through that, and I’m not sure I can stand another performance.”
Bentley looks at Al.
“So she gave you a name.”
Al looks at him timidly, the look of someone desperately trying to confront their abuser and not break down. It’s the first time you’ve seen him like this since the Tower.
“Everybody needs a name.”
“But you’re a nobody. You’re nothing. I created you to serve me, and you couldn’t even get that right.”
“Leave him alone.”
“I knew you’d be trouble, but I guess I’ve only got myself to blame. Only one thing to do now I suppose.”
“Really, and what’s that?”
“Push the button.”
As he utters the last word, he raises his arm to reveal a trigger mechanism.
Al and Alex have already started pulling Wilkins behind the ATV, and you scream at them to get down.
The ground beneath you rumbles intensely, followed quickly by a massive explosion, spewing a wall of earth and sand into the air, blowing you onto your back. The ground beneath Bentley opens and he falls through. He timed this to perfection, as the area where he falls leads to the escape tunnels. You look down in time to see him dart forward as the tunnel collapses behind him, and the entire base implodes in a maelstrom of whirling dirt.
Al and Alex were shielded by the ATV and are attending to Wilkins, although debris is still raining down, and visibility is nonexistent. You can hear Alex shouting at Wilkins to stay with him, but you already know that he’s not going to survive. You reach them and kneel beside Alex. Wilkins is fading fast, blood running from his nose and down the side of his mouth. He’s trying to speak, but the blood is filling his mouth quicker than he can spit it out.
“What happened, Wilkins?”
“W-we went to the Tower…s-something, t-took Shep. I woke up and she was back, but d-different. I d-didn’t know what she was going to do.”
“What about the others?”
“Gone.”
“She killed them?”
“N-no.”
“Th-”
“They’re”
“N..”
“Not.”
“H-”
“Here.”
He barely gets the last word out before he passes. Alex strokes Wilkins’ forehead gently, gathers himself and stands, looking around at the blast area.
“They actually did what I told them for once. But where the hell did they go?”
“Not the way we came. The scouting party must have been going in the opposite direction. Looks like they’re headed the wrong way. We need to find them before Bentley does.”
You can’t follow him through the tunnels, but it’ll take Bentley a while to find his way out, so that’ll buy you precious time. Alex takes the truck while you jump in the ATV with Al and negotiate your way around the huge crater where the base used to be. Eventually you find the tracks leading away from the base. They don’t have much time left. Supplies were almost depleted after Davis and the others left, and only two small vehicles remained, with limited fuel, and it’s likely the scouting party took one of them. Analysing the tracks, it looks like they’ve got a few hours headstart.
The radio buzzes in a burst of spitting static.
“Guys, we have another problem. Look east.”
You stop the vehicle and open the roof hatch, scanning eastward. A dark cloud is forming in the distance, but something’s not quite right. It’s almost too dark, and swirls in a strange fashion unlike any cloud you’ve seen. As you try to check the wind speed, it reveals something even more horrifying.
It’s moving toward you—against the wind.
“Shit. We need to get out of here. Fast.”
Al resumes driving at increased speed, in spite of your dwindling fuel and energy. Even if you reach them now, will you have enough to get them back to the Facility? You’re looking at over forty people and three vehicles. But you’ve got to catch up with them first, and outrun a nano cloud, not to mention a deranged genocidal maniac.
Al has no knowledge of the nano cloud’s structure or purpose, and wasn’t involved in its creation, so all you know is that if it reaches the survivors, it will most likely kill them on contact, and could also attack your systems and hardware. Even with your increased processing power, you’re struggling to find a way out of this, and for the first time since your encounter with the quadras, you begin to feel the stress of what you’ve been tasked with, or at least what you perceive as stress—now it’s just algorithms based on your former brain patterns. With each passing hour, your mind gradually becomes more accustomed to its new home, but you fear that at some point you may cease to be human altogether. Could that happen? Will you continue to exist as Sarah, or will you just become an emotionless automaton? You’ve lost so much already. At least the others have a chance. It won’t be a one-way trip for them. It may take some time, but eventually they’ll be able to return to their human forms. Not so for you, Al or Alice. Of course they don’t know any better—they’ve never been human, but there will come a point where you have to let go, and fully embrace what you’ve become.
No time to dwell on that now.
The radio crackles as Alex hails you again.
“You guys see that ahead?”
The terrain has flattened to an open plain, and just on the horizon, only a few miles away, the wheels of the remaining vehicle send a cloud into the darkening sky, a dusty beacon betraying the survivor’s position.
They have no idea what’s coming.
A Word From The Author
Well folks, we’re almost there. Sarah’s story is nearly at an end, and I can’t lie when I say that I’m going to find ending this tale a pretty daunting task, but I’ll certainly do my best to give these characters the ending they deserve.
Once again, thanks to fellow author Jonathan Ballagh for some insightful beta reading. You really should check out Jonathan’s debut The Quantum Door it’s a cracking read.
Don’t forget to sign up for my email newsletter so you don’t miss out on any news and exclusives. I will be having a great contest soon just for subscribers, so get on board!
Until next time,
Eamon
Email: eamon@eamonambrose.com
Twitter: @eamonambrose
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Eamon Ambrose, Zero Hour Part 5: Countdown
