The Darkness. Matt Brennan

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СКАЧАТЬ and look in the same area, but I don’t see anything except a pipe running up to the ceiling along the wall in the corner. I’m about to give up the search, when I decide to try and move the pipe. A lengthy section gives easily and then the floor where the snowcat once sat splits open. Some kind of elevator system raises the snowcat up to floor level.

      After I get over my shock of the power behind the lift, I race to the door of the snowcat, grab my backpack and the .22 rifle I stashed, and slam the door shut. I race to the door and push the pipe back in place and the snowcat lowers itself back into the floor. I close the garage door and turn to head back to the hangar, but I stop in my tracks.

       There’s a man walking out of one of the buildings 300 yards to the north of my position.

      He is dressed just like the other men on the security feed. Clearly Lyssa was right and they had a scout neither of us had seen. I shake my head when I realize she is never going to let me live this down. If I survive, that is.

      From where I’m standing, the man seems to be moving in the opposite direction from the hangar and I let out a silent sigh of relief. He must be reconnoitering the compound, taking the logical progression from one building to the other. If he stays on his current path, he’ll end up hitting the big main building and once he’s inside, I’ll be able to get back to the hangar. It was one of the first buildings I looked in myself when I got here, so it makes sense he’d want to check it out. But at the last moment he stops and eyes the main building up and down. He reaches up and scratches his chin and then looks at the smaller outbuildings. Then back at the main building. He shakes his head and begins walking straight for me.

      My stomach shifts violently in my gut.

      This isn’t a video game. If he sees me, two things are gonna happen and both of them are bad. Either I kill him or he kills me. I do the math in my head and it doesn’t look so hot for me. This guy is basically an experienced serial killer. He actually eats people for a living. He won’t hesitate. As for me?

       I’m screwed!

      I clutch my rifle and then slowly pull back the bolt and slide a bullet into the chamber, just like Lyssa taught me. The wind is howling so hard that I know there’s no way he could hear the tiny clicks that it makes from this distance, but I cringe anyway. I curse myself for not having a bullet chambered already and vow never to hold a gun that isn’t ready to fire again.

      He’s closed the distance between us to around three hundred feet. With the driving wind in my face I know I’m no threat at all to him. Before yesterday, I’d never even held a real gun. So hitting a person from 300 feet in the driving wind is impossible. I’ll just have to wait till he gets closer. I know the closer he gets the likelier it becomes that he’ll see me. Catch-22, but there’s nothing I can do.

      But instead of continuing towards me, he changes direction and walks towards Lyssa’s hangar. If he rounds the corner and sees my track, the element of surprise is over.

      It suddenly hits me that I’m actually thinking about shooting someone. This isn’t a video game and he won’t get a second life. I’m planning on shooting a man I have never met before and who has not injured me personally at all.

       What planet is this?

      When he reaches the shed, he tries the fake front door. I know it’s fake because I did the same thing when I first arrived. He cups his hand over his eyes and tries to peer in through the dusty window. He must have seen all he wants to see because he spins around and starts walking back towards me.

       I think I’m going to puke.

      He’s going to have to get so close to me, that I’ll be able to see the look in his face when I shoot. This is so surreal.

      He stops again, and shakes his head. Then he walks back and stands in front of the door, giving it a strong kick. When he does, all the snow that was on the roof above the fake door gives way, and a tidal wave of snow hits him dead in the face, knocking him to the ground.

      I almost jump out from m cover, either to rush in to attack him or perhaps to dash into the hangar, I’m not sure which, but he jumps back to his feet faster than I would have thought possible, and so I stay put. He trains his gun at the shed, chambers a bullet, but stops short of firing.

      I’m close enough so I can hear him say, “Screw this! If Jacques wants this place searched, he can come here and do it his damn self, he can, eh!”

      Then he spins and begins trudging off in the direction he came from. I lean back on the door, breathe a sigh of relief, and switch the safety back on. I can’t believe what I had been just about to do.

      When he is out of sight, I dash back to the hangar and grab a broom. Then I go outside and cover all our tracks as best as I can. I’m hoping the constant snowfall will hide my efforts even more.

      By the time I’m back in the bathroom, hitting the switch to open the panel so I can join Lyssa, I’m exhausted. That’s probably why I didn’t see her fist coming before she hit me dead on the chin. I fall like a sack of potatoes.

      Lyssa stands over me and kicks me in the ribs a few times before I manage to grab her leg and take her down.

      “Hey, it’s me! It’s only me!”

      “Why do you think I’m hitting so hard?”

      I finally grab her arms, roll her over on her back, and pin her to the ground, “Look, stop! I’m sorry, but I couldn’t leave my mother’s hard drive behind and hope they didn’t find it!”

      Lyssa spits in my face and knees me in a place it never occurred to me to protect. I instantly double over in pain and curl up into a fetal position. I can quite honestly tell you from experience, it hurt way worse than getting The Darkness did.

      You know, the plague that killed everyone? That’s what we call it anyway: The Darkness.

      I don’t know how much history you’ve had, but the plague isn’t just one virus—it’s actually three. No one I’ve talked to (including my parents, which says a lot) could explain to me exactly how it works, but somehow the genes of three completely different viruses ended up melding together inside a human host. You can catch two of the strains, but not all three. Like, I had one—the measles. The other is a simple foamy virus that scientists used for gene therapy. It’s nothing special really. In fact, on its own, it isn’t even harmful to humans, but as a retrovirus it’s the force that makes the darkness tick. It was released by accident when some technician messed up and got infected back in 2013. Believe it or not, the third one isn’t even a human virus at all, but rather a bacteriophage, which is a virus that only attacks bacteria. Unfortunately for humans, this one infects the most common species of bacteria on the planet—that crap is literally everywhere.

      At first, the outbreaks were isolated. It was a lot like the SARS epidemic and the West Nile virus outbreaks of the early twenty-first century. There were a few fatalities, but the World Health Organization (WHO) was more than ready for the outbreak and started an aggressive isolation and treatment regiment.

      They even attempted to quell the spread of virus by re-inoculating folks for rubella because, before we understood the melding, doctors had made the connection that only those who had contracted German measles seemed affected, at first.

      But then get this, some nutcase in Hollywood said the vaccines were actually the cause of the mutation, not the solution; which was a brilliant СКАЧАТЬ