The Eden Project: Humanity's Last Chance (18 page)

“If you are going to do it,” he said, “you have to do it right.”

On the floor of the commissary, the little ones had started to gather around Cassie and Gen when they all suddenly gasped. They pointed up at the big screen. The small boy was now on every screen in the dome, playing his trumpet with his eyes closed.

An explosion of smiles swept through the crowd.

“He’s so small,” Cassie said.

“Like us,” a little boy said.

Ada pulled on Gen’s shirt sleeve from behind.

Gen turned back to angelic Ada, who like the boy’s song was a stunning reminder of the unmatchable beauty of the human species.

“What is it?” Ada asked with her little voice.

The other little kids turned to Gen to hear her answer.

Cassie saw the kids gathering around and smiled to Gen, forgiving her and loving her all at once. They had watched the old holiday movies together and knew what the song must represent. Gen squatted to be on the little ones’ level. She smiled into Ada’s glistening blue eyes.

“It’s Christmas,” Gen said softly just for Ada.

“Christmas,” Ada repeated happily for everyone to hear. The little ones lifted their eyes again to the boy on the screen and listened to his beautiful, mysterious song called Christmas.

The song ended. Tuna rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He was shocked to see the skies already darkening outside the dome.

“You have to be kidding me. The satellite won’t be any good at night.” He punched down hard on his keypad.

“Hey, Claudia, anything happening with the SAR? Did it finish mapping?”

“Not sure it’s working,” she responded. “The DJ’s boat is thirty-five miles out and the SAR mapping has made it to forty miles but it never actually mapped his boat.”

“Strange. And the big one?”

“It’s closing, but still sixty-eight miles out. It’s moving slow. We think it may be out of fuel.”

“Copy,” Tuna said, frustrated. “Let me rework the SAR setup, make sure it’s right.”

“Copy,” Claudia signed off.

“Ugh,” Tuna grunted to himself. “Of course I slept all afternoon, I was up all night. Nothing’s working!”

* * *

THEY MET IN THE doctor’s lounge for Doctor Quarna’s comfort. This was a meeting unlike any before. If the ship approaching proved to be more than a derelict military or cruise ship floating the high seas, then the island could be empty of kids and purpose within a week.

“It’s not a derelict ship,” Claudia announced. “I hadn’t considered the current. It’s moving toward us and it’s counter current.”

“Why is it moving so slowly?” Doctor Naseer wondered aloud.

“Maybe they are playing dead,” Doctor Pappas suggested. “But for what purpose?”

“Are they baiting us to investigate them?” Doctor Becker asked.

Doctor Quarna listened to his colleagues’ ideas. He weighed those and more in his head. “We can’t be spooked by the ship. It is still more than fifty miles away.”

“True,” Claudia said. “But it could be here in an hour any time it wants. It has fuel. That’s how it fights the current.”

“An hour?” Doctor Becker said. “I had no idea it’s that close.”

“The dome is built to withstand any handheld weaponry. Guns, knives, even grenades.”

“And we have mounted automatics on top of the dome among other things,” Claudia said shocking all but Doctor Quarna.

“We do?” Doctor Pappas said. “How could they have withstood sixteen years of weather up there?”

“I go up there every Tuesday to clean and reload them,” Claudia said proudly. The others, even Doctor Quarna, were impressed by this fact.

“I had no idea,” Doctor Becker repeated.

“So why are we worried? Why did we go into pre-launch?” Doctor Naseer asked.

“Because of the unknown,” Doctor Quarna said. “And because if they see us, they will tell others and they will keep coming like locusts.”

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t they just give up?” Doctor Pappas did not understand.

“The blood,” Doctor Quarna said. “The concentration of uninfected blood in this dome will drive them to madness. There will be no end to their coming.”

His words silenced the room. They worried for the Project and they worried for the kids, but they also worried for themselves if they ever ventured to leave that island.

Claudia was less occupied with fear and more concerned with logistics. “Not that it would ever come to this, but remember we have handheld weapons stored away. High-tech stuff. If Doctor Hoss’s limpers ever get inside here or if we ever leave the island after the kids are gone, we got good guns.” She smiled but no one else did. Claudia came from a military family going back 240 years.

“Everyone, please relax, get some sleep,” Doctor Quarna said rising with the help of a half crutch. “If all else fails we could always send your boy Trumpet out there to deal with any hostiles.”

His attempt at levity worked and they all followed Doctor Quarna slowly out the door on their way to get a few hours sleep.

* * *

THE YOUNG ONES SLEPT better that night. The Christmas song Trumpet played had managed to calm them. Anyone over ten years old slept lightly at best.

Gen lay in her bed wondering how many more nights she would stare up at that familiar ceiling. A dialogue-heavy movie played on her scrollpad that lay next to her head on the wide pillow.

She liked the comfort of the breezy banter, but was not paying attention to the movie. Doctor Quarna wanted her to be breezy with everyone. Did he have any idea how hard that could be for a girl who loves a boy she can never have? If this pre-launch is not aborted, they will be flying to different parts of the galaxy in one week. Take that Romeo and Juliet.

* * *

ADAM WAS KISSING GEN in a forest. Not the synthetic kind protected by a foot of impenetrable glass, but the wilderness kind with exotic insects and poisonous flowers and misty mornings. He turned his head at the sound of a wispy-voiced fairy singing. Her voice echoed through the trees. When he turned back, Gen was gone. The forest was empty and alien.

The singing again, but now Adam was awake beneath the ES3 with his arm for a pillow. He sat up quickly in the near dark, disoriented.

The girl’s voice had become more human, but she was still singing an old time morning song about sunshine. He knew it well. All the kids had learned it from Doctor Becker.

He could see the little girl’s legs walking next to a small robot. They were out for a morning walk, Ada and her little robot Mrs. Wiggles. Up to greet the morning sun.

* * *

ANOTHER ALL-NIGHTER on the flight deck was all it took.

“I sent it, Claudia,” Tuna said into his scrollpad.

“Good work, Tuna,” Claudia replied. “Get some sleep.”

A normal person would do that, Tuna thought, and then he flipped up his satellite project onto the screen. He cracked his knuckles. “But it’s almost morning and I have a satellite to tame.”

* * *

CLAUDIA PUT TUNA’S SAR MAPPING tool up on the main screen. She rubbed her eyes and made sure the tool was online and working.

“And we’re up,” she said rising from her seat cheerfully to walk to the door. “Time for some strong coffee.”

By the time she entered the hallway, her good cheer had broken out into a full smile. She was not sure if her euphoric feeling was from the back-to-back all-nighters or from the fact that Tuna’s new tool would allow them to see everything coming their way no matter how big or small.

“Damn, forgot my mug,” she said spinning back to the control center.

She walked back to the huge control switchboard still smiling and eyeing her mug. When she reached down to pick it up, her eyes lifted to the big screen.

The mug shattered on the ground. Her face went ghostly white. There was something out there.

* * *

ADAM LAY ON HIS BACK under his ship thinking about what he would say to Zeke that day. He woke up realizing Ozzie was right. He wanted to make it right with Zeke. Ada’s singing had faded to a distant murmur. He had decided to lie there and listen to her sing until she was gone.

Mrs. Wiggles was a clever robot. Her main feature was she could wiggle her hips, but she could also stand on her hands. Ada made a dress for her and when Mrs. Wiggles stood on her hands her dress fell down over her head. Ada laughed every time.

Ada had sung until the first rays of the sun hit the horizon and then sang no more. She bent down to help Mrs. Wiggles straighten her dress to look like a lady.

When Ada stood up again, she turned back to check the horizon. She could no longer see outside. Her view was obstructed.

She froze. Her breathing began to increase rapidly. Four of the most sinister creatures she had ever seen crawled up the glass like water bugs trying madly to bite through the thick glass to get to her.

Infected humans, she thought through paralyzing terror which finally choked out of her throat forming the most chilling scream anyone had ever heard. They chomped wildly at the air and scratched feverishly at the glass. Their leathery, scabbed-over faces smiled with rotted teeth.

Adam came running and swiped Ada up into his arms. He moved away from the creatures, but they hurried up the glass trying to follow them. He started to run faster.

“No!” she cried. “Mrs. Wiggles!”

Adam slowed down to glance back at Mrs. Wiggles who had been knocked on her side. He no longer wanted to lay his eyes on the horrid creatures so he kept his head down, ran back and snatched up Mrs. Wiggles from the ground. He darted between ES3 and ES4 trying to keep those monsters’ eyes off Ada.

He kept running, holding Ada’s head down, clutching Mrs. Wiggles in his other hand when the emergency siren blared out loudly deafening him and waking the rest of the kids up to a nightmare.

Through his dazed, dreary eyes Tuna could see the first touch of dawn reaching through the darkness. The satellite focused on the ocean, but more importantly he could move the eye of the satellite.

A wide grin broke out on his face when he spotted the boat, barely recognizable in the murkiness of the pre-dawn ocean. He spotted the tall antennae and guessed the size at less than a hundred feet. He knew it must be the DJ’s boat, but he had to tell Claudia of the new toy they had on their hands. A satellite.

“Tuna,” Claudia said desperately over the scrollpad. “Are you looking at this? There’s something out there in the first few miles.”

His hands flew over the keys. His smile vanished. When the SAR mapping tool came up on his biggest screen, his heart sunk. The word “extinction” hit his brain and would not let go.

The SAR grid was blowing up. It mapped seemingly endless small moving shapes in the water.

“Tuna, are you there? Copy?” Claudia said.

He never heard her voice over the deafening siren that blared throughout the dome. He flipped to his satellite view and started to turn it toward the island of the Eden Project.

* * *

GEN RAN OUT OF HER ROOM in her night clothes and found chaos in the corridor. She saw him running into the hallway like a hero from an old movie, carrying Ada and her little robot too. She went to him, sure this was an intense dream until he shoved Ada into her arms and Gen saw the terror in both their faces.

“Get them all in rooms,” Adam commanded. “Keep them away from the glass.”

Her confusion left her lingering.

He grabbed her roughly. “Gen, snap out of it! We need you.”

She nodded. Adam ran off into the crowd. Cassie, Sylvia and Maya approached looking for direction.

“Get the little ones into the rooms!” Gen yelled.

Her friends jumped to action moving kids back to their rooms while Ada hugged Mrs. Wiggles in Gen’s arms.

* * *

ZEKE, OZZIE AND ADAM stood behind Milo and Isaac up on the lookout post. They were all horrified by images of the ocean surrounding the island. The waters on one side, the west side, were infested with small silver boats overloaded with an infected army.

“Tuna just pulled these images down from a satellite,” Doctor Quarna’s voice said through the lookout console. “He says he can see the boats scattering all the way out to the big boat.”

The rabid, human army began to climb to the level of the lookout post. Ozzie winced as he found himself staring one in the face through the glass. The cannibalistic freak had only one eye. His hands were mushy, mutilated flesh which stuck nicely to the glass allowing the skinny beast to climb.

“There’s too many,” Ozzie worried.

“We’re going to be fine, men,” Doctor Quarna assured. “First things first. Get the little kids, any eleven and under, secure in covered rooms.”

“It’s done,” Zeke said. “Most never saw anything.”

“Good,” Doctor Quarna said. “Now just sit back and watch Claudia thin these guys out a little.”

Adam defiantly walked to the glass which was being covered by the climbing horde of scabbed-over, skin rippers. Zeke joined him. They nodded to each other sternly, a sort of quick, macho truce to their personal problems.