Spores Read online

  She really did feel sorry for the scavengers the Institute sent above ground, due to the thick spore clouds, they had no choice but to wear them.

  “Scavengers?” she muttered, “Did I really say that?”

  She’d better remember not to say that word in the presence of Stephen. He preferred the term ‘resource collection teams.’ Even the blokes who risked their neck every time they went out didn’t call themselves that. They preferred the name ‘Wombles’

  It was the reason why she was so late for this meeting in the first place. Amber had been at the departure lounge, making sure that the day’s two Wombles were properly kitted out before they ventured out into the city centre to look for more goodies.

  She really had no business up there but she just had to see Miles before he ventured outside. He was single (well he was now), good looking and considering the circumstances, had a brilliant sense of humour. He’d only arrived a couple of days ago but had fitted in as if he’d been here from the start. Amber found him fascinating; she could tell that he’d been through a lot, his face told Amber more about his despair than his words did. The only piece of information she’d been able to prise out of him was that his wife had died in The Wasting and he’d stayed with her until the final moments.

  He was due back in a few hours; she couldn’t wait to see him. Maybe she’d work up the guts to ask him for a drink. It wasn’t like he could take her to the pub or go to the pictures or anything, but she did know quite a few hidden places in the Institute where she could take him.

  Would he say yes? Miles told her that he was thirty-eight this year. Back before The Wasting, she wouldn’t have even considered going out with a man almost old enough to be her father but her attitude had changed recently, she just hoped that his had too, considering he could still die next year

  Apparently, the Techs in the research department were on the verge of a breakthrough regarding this instant death at forty mystery. She quickened her pace; perhaps that was the reason for this meeting. Oh God, she hoped so.

  As she walked past a junction, Amber saw a young dark haired man a little older than her stagger before collapsing, it looked as though he was having a fit. He looked up, and then saw Amber. He held an arm out to her.

  “Please help me,” he cried.

  She dashed forward but before she could get to him, armed soldiers appeared from nowhere and surrounded the fallen man. What the hell was going on? The Institute had no military presence.

  One of the soldiers noticed her rushing towards them; he spun around, and pushed her into the wall. “Did you touch him?” he shouted.

  Amber pushed herself away from the wall; she looked into the brute’s cold blue eyes. “Of course I haven’t,” she said defiantly, “I’ve only just got here. Where the bloody hell did you lot come from?”

  The man just looked at her stone faced, perhaps that question was too hard for the moron to understand. She tried to push past the soldier and help that poor man; Amber was a qualified first aider, she even had certificates on her bedroom wall.

  “Will you get out of my way?” she said, when the soldier refused to move.

  He responded by growling and raising the butt of his assault rifle. Amber cringed back, expecting him to hit her with it at any moment.

  “Jackson! Don’t be a bloody fool.”

  An older man pushed the other soldier out of the way; Amber couldn’t fail to notice the acid stare that Jackson gave the man.

  “Who the hell are you lot and just what is going on?”

  She watched several men in white protective suits load the fallen man onto a stretcher and carry him towards the research department.

  “I’m Major Tyler, ma-am.” He glanced at her ID badge and nodded. “And you are Amber Barlow and you’re late.”

  He turned and walked away, “Come along,” he said glancing back. With her head bursting with questions, she scurried after the Major, eager to get away from that Jackson bloke.

  “So come on, what the hell is happening?” she tried to make her voice sound full of authority like she was a person of importance. “I asked you a question!”

  The man just chuckled to himself. “You sound just like the missus, don’t you worry your pretty little head, missy. The Colonel will explain everything.”

  He stopped outside the reception hall and stood aside to let her pass. This was no committee meeting, in fact, as she gazed around at the twelve women sat at the half empty tables, Amber saw that she was the only member present. All heads turned and stared as she entered the room. Amber saw that they too were just as bewildered as she was. This was so not right.

  Amber saw the Major pointing to a chair; she made a point of ignoring him and hurried over to another table where a young dark haired woman flashed her a welcoming smile.

  “Patsy, have you any idea what’s happening? I feel that we’ve just been invaded.”

  The woman shook her head, “I was hoping that you’d be able to tell me as I haven’t a bloody clue.” She pointed to a soldier standing at the back of the room. “You see that feller with the dirty blonde hair and blue eyes?”

  She turned around, trying not to jump when she noticed that the Jackson creep had followed her into the room, he stood by the now closed door grinning. Amber picked out the bloke that her friend was pointing at. “What about him?”

  “Well him and a couple of others walked straight into the research department a few minutes ago and bundled us all out. His name is Daniel by the way and in any other circumstance I’d say that he’s quite cute.”

  “Give your libido a rest for a second will you.”

  “Sorry. Anyway, as you can imagine Graham threw a right wobbler and told them all to piss right off, he even picked up a test tube and threatened to infect them. The soldiers didn’t give him a chance to carry out his threat, the next moment; he was on the floor crying out assault as two of them sat on his back.”

  She still couldn’t work out where all these soldiers had come from; as far as she knew, there was only one way in and that was through the main airlock system at the far side of the Institute, and she had just come from there. She watched a tall soldier enter the room and walk towards the main stage. By the reaction from the other soldiers; she guessed that this must be the Colonel.

  “Where is Graham, Patsy? Come to think of it, where are all the men?”

  Patsy shrugged, “I’ve been asking myself that same question ever since they ordered me in here. I don’t think they mean us any harm though, I mean our head technician did become pretty violent and they quietened him down without having to resort to violence themselves.”

  Amber wondered if Patsy would have said those words if she’d seen those maniac’s eyes just before he nearly broke her face with his rifle.

  The man on the stage tapped the microphone a couple of times, “Now that we are all here,”

  She noticed that the man was looking directly at her and felt the colour rise to her cheeks.

  “Good day, I’m Colonel David Hall. As I look around the tables, I see many anxious and confused faces that I can only ascertain are from our rather sudden arrival. Please put aside your fears as we mean you no harm.”

  If that was the case, why did Amber feel like she had just been thrown into a cage full of lions?

  “My men and a few civilians are what is left of the London Central Institute.”

  She watched him survey the room, her eyes found the blonde soldier who Patsy had pointed out at the back of the room and his face had gone very pale. She wondered if he was re-living a recent memory.

  “It took them just a couple of hours to overrun the London complex; we estimate that over four thousand lives were lost. We only escaped because my team was prepped for a mission.”

  “Who did it?” shouted Patsy.

  The Colonel didn’t look at her friend; his eyes found hers and stayed there.

  “No human being could have been capable of committing those atrocities young lady. It appears t
hat losing our older generation was only the start of our troubles. Those spore clouds have had a rather adverse effect on a few individuals; the stuff changed them into something beyond description and the resulting creatures really are the stuff of nightmares.”

  They had all heard the stories that the scavengers had brought back about seeing unidentified shapes in the mist and hearing weird noises but they’d always assumed that it was just livestock from the country entering the city looking for food.

  What if the soldiers were telling the truth?

  Despite feeling like a naughty schoolgirl in a classroom, Amber raised her hand. The Colonel nodded.

  “I’m sorry if I sound a little dubious here but our teams have never reported anything like that.”

  The man sighed, she watched a smile play upon his lips, Amber failed to see what was so amusing.

  “I understand that you are part of this Institute’s civilian committee?”

  She nodded, “Yes, I joined a few days ago.”

  That smile broke into a large grin, “Well, madam, it appears that your other committee friends have been hiding a few little facts. Those things and quite a few other nasty little beggars have been in your city for quite some time. The whole purpose of sending teams out was to determine the extent of the new infection.”

  Amber shook her head; she refused to believe that Stephen and the rest of them would keep vital information like this to themselves. “I’m sorry but I can’t accept this.”

  “Nevertheless Miss Barlow, those creatures do exist and they are right here in your city. One of the beggars almost succeeded in bringing down one of our choppers.”

  “What about the two teams we have out already?” Amber just hoped that Miles was okay.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve already dispatched a squad to bring them back.”

  Major Tyler jumped onto the stage. “You are the first colony we’ve found still intact,” he said. “The bases in Oxford, Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester now resemble abattoirs.”

  He paused as a gasp went around the room.

  “You were the last base to check. I’m sorry, but an attack is inevitable.”

  A woman at the side of Amber slowly rose to her feet, “I hope to Christ that you’re going to tell us that this is a rescue mission.”

  The Colonel took the microphone, “It is a limited evacuation.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” asked Amber. “We have over four hundred people in the Institute now. How are you going to remove all of us?” She wanted to know where the rest of the committee were, should they be not here backing up what the Colonel was saying?

  “We’re not,” replied Tyler. “We are only taking the women in this room.”

  The room descended into chaos as the other woman started shouting all at once, Amber stayed silent, she was too busy watching the soldiers hurry over to the main door and wandering just what they were about to do. Amber turned back when she heard the voice of the Colonel fighting to be heard over the panic-stricken voices of the other women. She watched him remove his pistol from his holster and point it to the ceiling; she covered her ears but the report still deafened her.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Before you all start calling me an inhuman monster, please consider what our alternative is. We leave you all here and move on to the York base and hope that the survivors, if there are any, are a little more grateful.”

  The other women began to quieten down. Amber kept her mouth shut, she wasn’t an idiot, that man wasn’t going anywhere without his find.

  “We will of course, leave some of our weapons here so the remaining people will be able to defend themselves should those things outside do manage to break in.”

  Patsy stood up, she glared at the two men on the stage, “This is bollocks, there isn’t a chance in hell that I’m going anywhere with you lot, I’m not going to be a rat jumping off a sinking ship.”

  That surprised Amber; she thought the woman would be the first one to climb onboard. Her friend went through men at an alarming rate. She was already getting fed up with her current boyfriend, Andy Summers. He had gone out with the first team.

  “You really do need to look at the bigger picture. The human race is facing extinction; you ladies potentially carry the future of our race in your womb. You, me, all of my men have all been exposed in some way to the spore cloud above ground, who knows what it’s doing to our bodies. Our species needs babies, lots of them.”

  Patsy reached across the table and grabbed Amber’s hand, “There is no way that I’m going with that lot.”

  “You are all too important to risk.” Shouted the Colonel. He put his hands out, palm up. “Okay, I’ll put this another way. We are not leaving here without you.”

  Amber watched one of the soldiers walk around the tables handing out a folded up piece of paper to the women.

  “There is a remote base in Scotland and we have just enough fuel to reach it. We’ll be safe there, then we can start rebuilding. That piece of paper in your hands has the name of your new partner written on it,

  “You can’t treat us like fucking breeding stock. What if we refuse then? Will you shoot us all in the head?” Demanded, Patsy.

  The Colonel look appalled, “Of course not, we’re not murderers. As this is a government facility and as we are now in charge, we will consider you to be trespassing and you will be escorted off the premises. Now, if you’re quite done, will you please sit down, miss?”

  The soldier reached their table and handed each of them a folded paper square.

  “We leave in two hours, ladies. Until that time, my men will escort you to a secure place of safety.”

  Amber opened the paper and read the name Sergeant William Jackson.

  Chapter Three

  He just had to get this goddamn mask off, the old seal rubbed against his sweaty skin and it was driving him bat-shit. Miles Gardener stumbled to a halt and took a deep breath whilst slowly counting to ten in his head; he tried to concentrate on what Amber had said to him over the radio just after the main doors had closed. He thanked Christ his partner, Edgar hadn’t switched his radio on yet, now that would be bloody embarrassing.

  Once his shift had ended, he was going to make sure that he took her up on that enticing offer. Miles felt the guilt returning and quickly slammed it back where it belonged. His wife would have wanted him to be happy, he was sure of it, besides, it wasn’t like he’d been the one to make the first move.

  “You only live once,” he muttered. In his case, he had about eighteen months left before he succumbed to The Wasting. “I may as well make the most of it.”

  He only had another hour to go before they were due back, that was sixty minutes, he tried to work out how many seconds but gave up, Miles just couldn’t do the maths, it was just too fucking hot inside this bloody mask.

  Maybe if he just took it off for a couple of seconds to wipe his face; Edgar wouldn’t know, he’d already lost sight of the man. This spore dust was pretty thick today, he’d hold his breath, not that it mattered, everybody he’d met had breathed at least some of this stuff in, a bit more wouldn’t hurt. Just the thought of that cool breeze flowing across his cheeks made him reach for the straps.

  “Miles, are you okay buddy, why have you stopped?”

  Shit, he considered ignoring the voice, pretending that the speaker in the helmet had buggered up but then he saw the bulky figure of his partner appearing through the mist.

  Miles tapped the side of his helmet with one of his white gloves then put up his thumb with the other, hoping that Edgar would understand.

  The other suited figure held up two thumbs and vanished back into the mist. Miles had seen that action performed in dozens of movies, he never thought that he would have to use it himself.

  Oh God, of the many things he enjoyed before all this shit occurred, chilling out in front of a good movie was right at the top of his list. His vast collection of Blu-ray, DVDs and videos were the envy of all his friends i
n the online discussion groups he had joined. He often thought that he missed his films more than he missed his wife.

  Miles Gardener was thirty-eight years old and until six weeks ago, had lived with his wife in a small two bedroomed-terraced house in Ipswich. They’d discovered that they were unable to have children a decade ago. The news had hit his wife hard, she’d set her life on having a big family.

  It hadn’t taken Helena that long to start building up a doll collection. His movie obsession started a little later.

  Their lives were safe and predictable, then the virus exploded across the globe, destroying half the population and forever changing the lives of the survivors left in its wake.

  The infection had wiped out everyone over the age of forty. There had been no exceptions. His Helena had been forty-two. Miles had watched her degrade day by day until, after three weeks, she had finally passed away.

  She had been one of the last ones in their neighbourhood to succumb. When their friends’ and neighbours were dying around them, Miles tried to convince Helena that she might be one of the lucky few who might escape. He hadn’t really believed the newly formed regional government’s propaganda, even when the lumps pushed up from under her skin and the hardened ridges began to grow across her knuckles and down her spine, he still hid her from the mobile euthanasia units.

  They had said it was the only humane solution; the infected would be dead in a few days anyway. Why prolong the agony when a simple injection would solve everything. It would be over in minutes, they even disposed of the bodies. God, Miles grew to detest those plain grey vans driving up and down the deserted streets blaring out their hateful tannoy messages. They made it sound like they were offering to get rid of your old washing machine or tatty old armchair.