O-Negative: Extinction (24 page)

The General’s voice sounded uncertain for the first time “Joe are you serious.  An MEE.  I’m going to need a few minutes here you fucking arse.  Stick by the phone I’ll get back to you”

“I’ll be waiting general, it’s not like we’re running out of time oh wait a minute yes we fucking are.  Over and out”.

Joe slammed the phone down.  Wendy, Laura and Ralph had joined him and Dominic in Florence’s office - old office he reminded himself.  Dominic chimed in first “That geologist guy is dead as a dodo mate.  You took him out and shot him at dawn with a bazooka”.

Joe smiled vaguely “Yeah what happened to that guy?  We could really do with a geologist right now”.

Wendy tapped her fingers on the desk.  “You are one ballsy bastard Dr Harper I’ll give you that.  I’d never have thought you’d had it in you not the way you let Professor Chapman wind you round her little finger”.

Laura scowled slightly “Who’s Professor Chapman?”  Joe frowned at Wendy “She was the station head here.  Her body’s on the table in the dining room.  I guess I don’t have to worry about what she might think anymore.”  He took a deep breath.  “Sorry Laura that sounded horrible.  I guess I’m just a bit wound up.”  “No problems Joe I am after all only a ‘weasely toe rag’ of an American after all” Laura smiled as she said this and Joe laughed “You heard that hey?  Heat of the moment and all that”. 

Ralph put his hand up in the air.  Joe gave him an exasperated look.  “Ralph you don’t need to put your hand up if you want to speak, what’s on your mind”.

“err I just saw breaking news on the BBC website that there’s been reports of unusual seismic tremors at the North Pole and at two other locations in the Arabian Desert and the Gobi desert – didn’t you say something about picking up a tremor the same day we lost contact with the central stations?”

Joe and Wendy looked at Ralph and their faces dropped.  Laura and Dominic cast questioning looks.  Dominic asked “What, what have tremor’s got to do with this?”. Joe shook his head.  “I was right.  Our black structure isn’t the only one.  If they follow the same pattern I’d imagine we can expect reports of metallic creatures wiping out anyone who’s living in the nearby vicinity.  The MEE’s started”.

“Joe you’re scaring me even more than I was already and I’m barely standing now what the hell is an MEE” Laura asked.  Ralph answered for him “Mass Extinction Event”.  Wendy came in with her take. “Like the dinosaurs”.  Dominic sat down on Florence’s old chair.  “Another punch pulled hey Joe – can this get any worse?”

Joe sat on the desk next to the secure terminal.  “Oh I think it can and will get worse.  I think we need to decide what we’re going to do.  Much as I love him I don’t think General Cartwright is going to be our ticket off the island.  He answers to higher powers and those powers are going to have a lot more to think about than a few dead scientists in a few hours.  Suggestions?”

“Stay here and see what happens.” said Ralph – “it seems like those creatures have cleared the entire continent other than a few lucky individuals like ourselves - maybe we should sit tight and see how things pan out before making a decision?”

Joe didn’t immediately shoot down Ralph’s idea but Wendy was sceptical “Sure we could stick around for another couple of months or so but the summer season’s going to come to an end eventually and the weather will come in and our options will be reduced even further.  But I guess if everyone’s happy to shack up here with the blood stains and the ghosts of our dead colleagues it could be an option.”  Joe noticed that she looked over at Dominic when she said this.  Laura tilted her head at Joe. “If no one’s coming to pick us up and the helicopter’s out of fuel then we might not have a choice”.  Dominic shifted in his seat “I don’t think staying here’s going to work out however much we might like to.”  He glanced at Wendy. “ I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure but when I was in the air I noticed the diesel storage tank has been ruptured – the fuel’s leaked out on to the ice.  I don’t know how big the main generator fuel tank is but I’d imagine you probably wouldn’t be able to heat the station for more than a week or so now anyway.”

Joe clicked his tongue.  “Ok so that leaves us the resupply ship.  Dominic had any three week training courses on piloting a merchant navy vessel?”

“Not on a merchant navy vessel but I’m a dab hand at a Royal Navy cruiser.  I’d imagine it can’t be much different.  Shit if I can fly an Apache helicopter from the South Pole I’m sure I can get a 50 tonner somewhere – the question is where.  Argentina or Chile’s the easiest if we follow the coast but I don’t fancy spending my last days in an Argie prison cell.  If they’ve got the right charts, which I’d imagine they will, the Falklands is probably our best bet.”

Joe nodded “I agree.  It’s our only option.  I think we’ve probably given General Cartwright enough time to get back to us if he was going to.  Time to ship out comrades.  Falklands here we come.”

She was a home with Rashid when their building started shaking.  As they both jumped up off the sofa the lights flickered and plaster dust from the ceiling above fell around them.  The tremor only lasted a few seconds ending almost as soon as it began but Rashid looked across at her with concern.

“What the hell was that?  An earthquake, do you get a lot of them in Jeddah?”

“Not in my lifetime Rashid.  I’ve never experienced one.  I think there was an earthquake near the border with Yemen back in the 1960’s but that’s it”.

There was a knock at the connecting door of their flat.  She moved to open the door finding Rahmaniah looking like she’d come to a fancy dress party dressed as a ghost, obviously the plaster dust falling from the ceiling hadn’t just been restricted to their flat.  She laughed at her friend’s somewhat incongruous state.

“Mani I hope I don’t look as ridiculous as you.  Are you, Salem and the girls alright?”

Rahmaniah definitely looked a bit out of sorts.  She wasn’t sure if this was because of the earthquake or because she had just realised she’d come round looking like a builder.  Rahmaniah absently dusted the white dust from her shoulders and shook her head a bit to try to free the dust from her hair.

“Well that was a bit of a surprise I can tell you.  Salem and the maids are fine, he’s gone down to the basement to check that the cars are ok.  I’ve set Lila and Melita to tidying up – I’ll send them over here in a minute.  Bloody Salem as soon as he’d made sure I was ok he was off to look at the cars”.

Rashid chuckled.  “Well at least he checked on you first hey?  It seems to me like no harm’s been done except perhaps to our pride. 

Rashid invited Rahmaniah in to sit down “Come in, I’ll get you a fruit juice?”

Rahmaniah relaxed slightly as she sat down on the sofa and began to see the funny side of the situation.  She sat down next to Rahmaniah while Rashid went into the kitchen.  She wondered how many other Saudi men would consent to getting their guest a drink while their wife was in the room.  She had wanted to keep a live in maid but Rashid wasn’t really used to being waited on hand and foot and he’d suggested that maybe the two maids that Rahmaniah now had living with her could manage to service both flats.

Rahmaniah gestured towards the remote control on the coffee table in front of her.  “Javi turn on the news let’s see what they’re saying about the tremor”.

She turned on the large plasma television that took up most of the far wall and got up to wipe some of the building dust from the screen using a tissue she had in her pocket.  Flicking through to the local Jeddah One channel she saw that they’d interrupted normal programming to make a report about the unusual earth tremor that had hit Jeddah.  She sat back down to watch as the presenter’s face was replaced by a graphic showing where the epicentre of the quake had been.  It seemed to be closer to Riyadh than Jeddah and she wondered whether there had been more damage there than here.  At that moment the reporter said they were going to go over to their correspondent in Riyadh.  When Rashid came back into the room with three glasses of fruit juice the screen flicked to a reporter standing outside Kingdom Tower the largest building in Saudi Arabia.  Though the tower was as impressive as ever the camera zoomed into one side of the building where several windows were missing their panes of glass.  The dark oblongs in the side of the building gave the building a bit of a broken look.  Nevertheless the reporter was thanking Allah in his mercifulness for though the glass panes had fallen out from over 30 storeys up they had merely crashed down on to the concrete roof of the shopping mall below.

She took a sip of her drink as she settled back into the sofa to watch the rest of the news item which largely consisted of various people describing their near misses from certain death – though she noticed none of them looked too hurt.  The item was coming to a close and the camera was focused in on the reporter making his closing remarks when there was the sound of screaming and the camera panned away from the reporter to film people running down the street towards where they were located.  As the cameraman started to focus the camera it seemed as if hundreds of metallic objects rose up from the pavement behind the running people covering them like some sort of silvery gloop.  The mass of silver then continuing to ‘pour’ down the street without stopping.  The reporter could be heard saying “What the hell is that” and then the camera crashed to the floor and went black.  For a few seconds there was nothing on the television screen and she and the others started shouting “Hey what happened there”, “Did you see that”, “Did something just attack them?”, “Was that water?”  The main newscaster in the Jeddah studio came on air looking somewhat concerned.

“Errmmh our apologies for the technical difficulties, we’ll try to get back to our team in Riyadh later in the programme.”  He looked down at his prompt pages and continued.  “Now in other news scientists in Antarctica have started using social media sites to broadcast pictures and footage of a strange structure that has appeared at the South Pole.”  The video footage that followed showed some grainy footage of a huge black circular tower sticking up out of the white expanse of the Antarctic wilderness.  As she was trying to get an impression about the scale of the tower in the video the power went off and the television and lights in the flat went dark.

Rashid got up from the chair he’d only just sat down in and tried the light switches “Looks like the tremor has caused a few problems.  I have to say that didn’t look too good for that reporter in Riyadh.  Maybe a chemical spill or something?  Well not much we can find out with the power out, Javeira do we have any candles?”

She shook her head slightly as she responded to the first part of Rashid’s statement.  “I don’t think it was a chemical spill, it almost looked like hundreds of little robots or something but I have to admit the footage was out of focus so it could be anything.”  She went on to say. “If we’ve got any candles they’ll be in the store room, I’ll go and have a look”.

As she left the living room she heard Salem coming in through the adjoining door of their apartments.  “Good job I came up the stairs or I would have got stuck in the lifts.  Our cars are all fine but the Mahasen’s Range Rover has some superficial damage to the roof”.  The Mahasens were a middle aged couple who lived a couple of floors down.  She moved into the store room and began opening drawers in the unit where she thought there might be some candles.  She was just opening the bottom drawer when there were a couple of thuds from the living room and then a drumming sound from the side of the building.  She moved to look out of the small window in the store room and then suddenly stepped back and screamed. “Rashid, Salem there’s something coming up the side of the building”. 

There was no immediate answer to her shout of alarm and as she turned to go back out into the main part of the flat the door which she’d left partially open burst inwards and a mass of metallic creatures attacked her.  She screamed and then as a feeling of sheer terror enveloped her she blacked out.

When she regained consciousness the room she was in was empty.  The candles she’d been holding in her hand were scattered across the floor.  She felt dazed and pulling herself into a sitting position called for Rashid.

“Rashid Rashid I think I’ve fainted.  Are you there?”

There was a deafening silence.  A memory that couldn’t be ignored resurfaced and she shuddered uncontrollably at the recollection of hundreds of metallic creatures launching themselves at her.  She got up from the floor and grabbing hold of the door frame to keep herself upright staggering into the corridor and out into the main living area.  At first glance everything seemed as it had before; the Lebanon cedar dining table and chairs, the ornate 19
th
century lamp, the mahogany display cabinet over which she’d hung a panoramic picture of the Dome of the Rock Mosque all looked normal and then she saw Salem’s inert form lying by the shared apartment door.  A strangled cry rose from within her chest and she moved towards the prostrate figure.  As she stumbled towards him she had to move around the sofa and that’s when she saw the bodies of Rahmaniah and Rashid.  Rahmaniah was lying face down on the floor while Rashid perhaps in some vain effort to protect her lay on top of her face up.  His green eyes were staring motionlessly at the ceiling.  But where before they had sparkled like cut glass they now looked milky and lifeless.  She felt as if she’d been hit by a truck.  Rashid’s mouth was twisted in an expression of pain and his hands were clenched into fists on either side of his body.  But it was his thawb that drew her gaze.  It had acquired a dark red stain down the front caused by the blood slowly oozing from a long thin wound reaching across the full length of his neck.  She screamed and wrenched her head to one side to avoid looking but that wasn’t going to help anyone.  She then dropped to the floor and desperately searched for signs of life, kneeling firstly in a pool of her husband’s congealing blood to check his neck and then Rahmaniah’s.  Despite her frantic efforts to raise either of them she knew in her most fragile of hearts, a heart not yet healed from the death of her father and brother, that they and Salem were all dead. 

She lay beside her dead husband and cousin for some time not wishing to move, not wishing to think about what she was going to do or what had happened.  In the end it was thirst that caused her to push herself up on to her knees and crawl towards the bathroom.  As she crawled past Salem’s body she spotted the body of Melita lying prone on the floor in the other flat.  Next to her rolled up into a ball was Lila their Pilipino maid.  She heard Lila moan softly.  Gods Lila was still alive?  She stood shakily and moved into Salem and Rahmaniah’s apartment.

“Lila it’s me. It’s Javi.  Are you ok?  Are you hurt?”  Her voice sounded too deep and shook after sobbing for so long next to her husband and friends.  She lent down and put her hand on Lila’s shoulder.  To start with Lila said nothing merely pulling her knees closer to her chest but after she pulled Lila towards her and hugged her stroking her back and making soothing noises the maid slowly unfolded her limbs and moved her head so she could see her face.

“Mistress Javeira.  I thought you were all dead? Oh God those things they just came out of nowhere.  There was nothing we could do.  Melita was dead in an instant and I was sure I was next but they simply ran all over me and then by the time I screamed they were gone.  Why are we still alive Mistress?  Why did those things kill Melita?  Where are Master Rashid, Master Salem and Mistress Rahmaniah?”

“I’m afraid they are all dead as well Lila.” A small sob rose up again unbidden.  “I don’t know what’s happened.  I think whatever’s happened here has happened all over Jeddah and maybe from what we saw on the television across the whole Kingdom”.

“What are we to do Mistress?  Should we call the police?”

“I wouldn’t hold out much hope of a response Lila.  Those things came up 10 storeys.  I don’t think they’ll be too troubled by the police.  Allah have mercy this is awful.  I don’t know what to do”.

“Oh Mistress I’m just so relieved that you’re not dead.  If I’d been left alone I don’t think I could have gone on living.  Oh poor Master Salem and Mistress Rahmaniah”.  She burst into tears and Javeira couldn’t stop herself from crying along with her.

“Oh Lila I know.  Don’t cry don’t cry.  Maybe if we’ve survived there are others too.  Come on back to my apartment.  Maybe we can use my mobile to try and reach other people?”

Arms around each other they went back into her apartment.  She tried to shield Lila from the sight of the other bodies but it was no good Lila whimpered softly next to her as they passed them.  Out of sight of the bodies in her own bedroom she didn’t feel any better but at least she now had something to occupy her mind.  She turned on her mobile and was relieved to see it still had some charge left.  There also seemed to be a normal level of reception.  She dialled her mother’s number and let the phone ring until it went to answer machine.  She tried Aunt Maya’s number next but it too went to voicemail.  She went through the list of her closest friends and colleagues to no avail.  Either they were also dead or away from their phones.  She even tried her father’s drunkard brother Masood but there was no answer from his phone either.  After 20 minutes of getting nothing but voicemails she realised she’d been sent a text from her telecom provider.

“This is an emergency alert.  The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is under attack.  All citizens are to report to their nearest emergency shelter.  A full list of which are available from www.ministryofinterior.sa.gov”.

She showed the message to Lila and then realising she couldn’t read Arabic read it out to her.

“Oh thank God Mistress other’s have also survived.  We should go to the emergency shelter at once.  Where is the closest one?”