Immunity: Apocalypse Weird Read online

  IMMUNITY

  E.E. Giorgi

  Immunity

  E. E. Giorgi

  Immunity, 1.0

  Of Apocalypse Weird

  Copyright © 2014 E. E. Giorgi and Wonderment Media

  All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in reviews, without the written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, locales or organizations are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are imaginary, and any resemblance to actual places, events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition

  Published by Wonderment Media Corporation

  Cover Design by Michael Corely

  http://www.mscorley.com

  Editing by Ellen Campbell

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  PROLOGUE

  Kolkata, India, 1988

  Kavya gasped and stumbled, her hands groping in the dark.

  A voice boomed. “Dr. Sharma!”

  Steps resonated down the hallway. The clacking of boots, the metal clinking of handcuffs and firearms.

  She shouldered through the fire doors and dashed down the stairs, her rushed footfalls echoing against the narrow walls. Relentless, her pursuers followed, the metal structure of the stairs jerking under their heavy gait.

  “You’re wasting your time, Dr. Sharma,” the voice insisted. “You are coming with us, whether you want it or not.”

  Kavya knew that voice well. It had populated her nightmares for the past four months, coaxing, cajoling at first, a soft hum luring her to the dark side. But Kavya knew better than to give in to the evil snake, and the decoys had turned into threats.

  At the stair landing, she charged through the doors and ran, the floor sleek under her feet. She felt the distance between them shorten, their military gear thumping closer and closer.

  The lab!

  She made a left, slammed the door closed and locked it, then ran through another corridor. They took the door down with the butts of their rifles, the wood splintering like toothpicks under the men’s brutal force.

  “I’ve got news for you, Dr. Sharma,” the Voice called after her. “You keep hiding from me and you’ll never see your baby again.”

  Oh God.

  She snuck into the lab and slammed the heavy metal door. Metal—they can’t crack through metal. But there weren’t any locks this time. She spun around, desperately looking for something—anything. The file cabinet was laden with reprints and publications, yet on pure adrenaline she was able to push it against the door right as the men came pounding at it.

  “Dr. Sharma!” Hammering against the door echoed the call. “Wanna hear your baby’s voice, Dr. Sharma?”

  Her eyes strayed across the empty lab, dull fluorescent lights pooling over pristine workbenches, glassware, reagents. Her desk was in a corner, stacks of papers and notebooks piled against her Macintosh.

  The cabinet quivered as the men pounded at the door.

  Quick. I’ve got to be quick!

  She dashed to her desk, took armful of notes, papers, anything she could carry and tossed them on the workbench next to the Bunsen burner.

  The pounding at the door stopped.

  “Listen very carefully, Dr. Sharma.” The Voice had turned into a hiss. A click, then the crackle of static. A recording. A child, crying, “Maa!” Her child.

  Her baby, only twenty months old.

  Kavya started shaking, tears rolling down her face. It’s not true. Can’t be true. My baby’s with Nilush. My baby’s safe. She unplugged the Macintosh, yanked it off the desk and dropped it on the workbench with the rest of her stuff.

  “Hear that, Dr. Sharma? You love your baby, don’t you? You don’t want anything bad to happen to her, do you?”

  Hands quivering and heart pounding in her throat, she frantically swept the shelves, pulling down bottles and reading labels. The hammering at the door resumed. The cabinet started yielding.

  “Dr. Sharma! It’s done, there’s nothing you can do now.”

  Neither can you.

  She found them, at last, two bottles of methyl alcohol and one of nitric acid, and mixed them. The door rattled, the cabinet shifted forward. Kaya dashed back to the burner, rotated the gas tap and grabbed the lighter.

  The recording played once more. “Maa! Mummy!!”

  There was one final bang against the metal door. Defeated, the cabinet fell to the floor with a loud thud. The door sprang open and the men lunged inside, their rifles loaded and poised.

  I love you, baby. I love you.

  Kavya clicked the lighter.

  * ONE *

  Red. The color of the land had seeped into the sky, as orange clouds of dust swept over the mesa. Massive boulders staggered in the distance, crooked and so precarious looking you’d think a drunkard put them there.

  Everything had turned red.

  Dense and sticky, dust infiltrated every skin pore, every crevice of the body. It lingered without a purpose or a destination, too light to settle back to the ground, and too heavy to be blown away by the wind.

  This is hell.

  The jeep jerked to avoid yet another pothole, waves of red sand snaking along the cracked pavement. Outside, you couldn’t hear a thing. Inside, the stereo blasted Trivium music.

  David hit the brakes and let the dust settle on the road. Not that it ever did. He wiped his brow with the heel of his right hand, the left one fumbling for the smartphone in his pocket. He unlocked the screen and tapped the network icon.

  Surprise, surprise. No reception.

  Three days driving in the middle of nowhere and no fucking reception.

  A film of red dust covered the dashboard and shotgun seat, despite keeping the windows shut and the air setting on recycle. David ran a hand through his ash blond hair and felt the grainy texture of his scalp.

  My kingdom for a shower.

  If only I had a kingdom.

  He reached for his lukewarm bottle, uncapped it, then looked at the water level and sighed.

  Better save it, he thought, and stuck the bottle back in the cup holder.

  The dust settled. Not much, but enough to discern some landscape. To the left sprawled the dry basin of a lake, the arch of a gray dam holding its emptiness at one end. To the right loomed layers of rocks stacked one on top of the other like phyllo dough, slanted into the earth as though somebody had randomly thrown them there.

  Ahead, the road dipped down again and left the mesa. Dust blurred the lines of the horizon into a persistent fog, yet past the towering walls of orange rock, he finally saw it. He popped the glove compartment and took out his binoculars.

  “Yes! Gas station! The map was right, after all.”

  He tossed the binos on the shotgun seat and cranked up the volume of the stereo.

  “Gas station, gas station, gas station!” he yelled, chanting along the discordant chords of Matt Heavy’s electric guitar. He put the jeep in neutral and let it accelerate on its own down the hill.

  “Weeeeeeee!”

  That’s childish, Dave.

  Who the hell cares, I’m a survivor.

  He let go of the wheel, raised his hands and yelled, “Survivooooooor!!!”

  The jeep dipped down, particles of red sand zooming against the windshield like stars in a quantum leap—You watch too many sci-fi movies, Dave—and then reached the bottom of the incline, spluttered, gasped and stuttered along.

  “Oh come on!” He slapped the dashboard. “Gas station! Right there! Can’t leave me now!”

  It did. Stopped right in the middle of the road. Not that anybody cared. He hadn’t seen a soul
roam this part of the world in three days.

  “Fine!”

  He popped the trunk, grabbed his scarf, wrapped it around his face, and stepped into the dust storm whirling outside. He blinked a few times, his eyes fighting the swirling sand and miserably losing the battle. One hand pressing the scarf tightly against his mouth, he leaned over the trunk, swept away the comforter, duffel bag, and pillow, and fished out the last gas can.

  Last five gallons.

  Gas station better be open.

  He poured the gasoline cursing the fact that he didn’t pack more cans. As if it’d been even possible. His mind raced back to the crazy lines at every gas station he’d passed in California, the chaos, the car pile-ups along the freeway, the uproar and looting in every city he drove through.

  You’re lucky you got this many cans to bring along, Dave.

  Lucky my ass. Lucky to get away from crazy California only to die out here. In the desert. Me. Born and raised in the Bay Area.

  He’d been away from any form of life for so long he was ready to start a conversation with the rocks.

  David dripped the last of the gas into the jeep’s tank, then screwed the cap back on. He braced himself against the dust-laden wind and slid back behind the wheel, dropping the empty can in the back.

  He turned the key and exhaled as the old engine barked back to life.

  “C’mon baby. To the gas station, now. I bet nobody thought of looting a gas station out here in the desert.”

  He was wrong. The pumps were dry, the shop windows cracked, and the shelves inside wiped clean. Sand had heaped against the door and along the aisles. He peeked through the broken window but saw nothing worth taking. His heart sank. He leaned against the door and slammed a fist into the wall.

  “Fuck!”

  The air was so dry tears evaporated from his eyes as they formed.

  Not even worth crying, this is so bad.

  He looked at the landscape, the red mist lingering over the boulders like a persistent headache, and contemplated his odds.

  He’d survived a nuke explosion, the panicky rampage that followed, the crazy pandemic, the ravaging fires. He’d managed to flee into the desert, one of the few privileged ones who’d been given easy access in the name of science. Sure, he’d thought, after all, staying home would’ve certainly signed his death sentence. Sure, who else’s gonna be in the desert anyway?

  Suddenly the idea of spending a few months in the desert—high desert, they’d told him—was no longer appealing. He’d always been around people, his entire life. Even when camping up in the Sierras he’d meet people along the trail, people setting their tent a few yards away, people talking and laughing wherever he went.

  People.

  His whole life he’d been around people.

  David checked his cell phone again, one last desperate attempt to reach out to some kind of civilization. Surely they were going to send somebody looking for him. After all, didn’t they reach out to him as one of the country’s supercomputing experts?

  You can put that in your ass right now, Dave.

  All your world’s expertise is not going to save you now.

  He swallowed, his throat harsh and dry. He could taste sand in his mouth. My kingdom for a bottle of scotch, he thought, wobbling back to the jeep. If only I had a kingdom.

  He started the engine again and blasted the stereo. The final, angry notes of Pillars of Serpents filled his ears.

  Might as well die happy.

  He squinted through the windshield pondering whether to go forward, turn around or go nowhere at all, when something peculiar caught his attention. Something black, rising up in the sky. Not red, like the sand, not orange like the dust and the rocks and just about everything else in this Martian landscape.

  Black.

  He reached for the binos and leaned against the windshield. At first he could no longer find it, his eyes lost in the nooks and crannies of the swelling boulders. He swept the binos to the left then back to the right. And then he saw it again: a thin plume of smoke rising above the cushion of red dust.

  Could that be… somebody?

  He strained his eyes. Between the cracks of the landscape and a row of withered tree stumps stood a lonely brick wall blackened by fire, next to the rusted body of a pick-up truck, tires and windshield missing.

  Could be the usual signs of abandonment.

  Could be.

  The plume of smoke told him otherwise, though.

  David licked his parched lips and returned the binoculars back to the glove compartment. From the stereo, Matt Heavy strung the opening notes of Ember to Inferno. David pushed the stick back into drive and started singing out loud the lyrics.

  It’s an inferno all right.

  An inferno I plan on leaving behind while still alive.

  * * *

  The old man crouched by the fire and revived it with a stick. Embers sparked and hissed, as if offended by the sudden commotion. Black smoke rose high, breaking the monotony of the persistent haze.

  The jeep lurched and wobbled along the ruts of something that could’ve been a dirt road, though David was no longer sure. He just followed the plume of black smoke. His tank was close to nil, his stomach was growling with hunger and the only fuel he had left was the heavy metal in the stereo.

  The old man saw the cloud of dust approach and stood up.

  David stopped the car and killed the engine. A film of sand settled on the windshield. He turned the wipers on and carved out two cones of visibility. The man was still standing, still looking puzzled, as if he’d never seen a jeep before.

  Maybe not in a long time.

  The blackened wall he’d seen with his binoculars was all there was left of what once had been a home, the rest of the house delineated by the stumps of the remaining four walls. There were more broken homes in the vicinities, all at various stages of decay. One still had a bit of a roof with a dish antenna poking out, a surreal sighting in a place like that.

  Yet the man, standing still by his makeshift fire, was the only living soul David could spot, at least as far as the lingering dust would let him see. He ran a hand through his thin, ash-blond hair, and wondered if he’d be presentable enough to a stranger after five days without a shower, three without a change of clothes. He figured it wouldn’t matter anyway, and got out of the car.

  He opened his mouth, inhaled to proffer a salute, and choked. Sand ran up his nose and down his throat. It stuck to his eyeballs, stinging. He doubled over and started coughing, tears running down his cheeks.

  The man stood. The fire crackled. David wheezed.

  As the cough subsided, he pounded a fist on his chest and swallowed, blinking away grains of sand stuck in his eyes. He waved at the man, but the man didn’t wave back. He didn’t offer a drop of water or a spare word.

  Hell, the man didn’t even blink. You’d think somebody in his shoes would be happy to see a fellow human being. What was he, a statue? Baked by the sun and molded by time, his ancient face was the same color as the sand devouring the landscape all around them. Maybe he’d morphed into the land, standing as impassible as the rocks lining the horizon.

  “I-uh—I’m Dave.” David wiped his eyes with the back of his left hand and then stretched out his right one. A good brotherly handshake to break the ice.

  The man moved this time. His eyes did. He blinked.

  “Bro. Do you not speak my language?”

  His lips twitched. They came together a notch, a web of wrinkles forming on his cheeks and chin. “Of course I speak your language,” he said, kneading his voice out of his throat. “You guys imposed it on us.”

  David let his hand hang for a few more seconds, then goofily brought it to his jaw and scratched his three-day-old stubble. The fire smelled of resin and pinecones. A pot on an iron stand above the flames gurgled, its aroma slowly wafting through the smoke. The scents revived him.

  David’s stomach growled.

  The man shook his head and crouched back by t
he fire, his long thin braid waving between his shoulder blades. “I don’t have much, brother,” he said, gloomily. “But what I have is yours.”

  David exhaled. He wiped his hands on his dirty jeans and looked around. All the man had was an old, rusty pick-up truck sitting askew against a tree stump. Two horses stood quietly behind the truck, the two of them not looking very sociable either. There was a pot on the fire and a rain barrel by the solitary wall. David resisted the urge of checking whether or not there was any water left in it.

  The old man must’ve read his mind. “You can get water from the well, by the church,” he said, pointing in some vague direction, past the pick-up truck. “The church is no longer there, but you’ll see what I mean.”

  Despite the gruffness, David was ready to tear up, so long had it been since he’d spoken to a human being. “Thank you,” he mumbled, his voice still coarse from the bout of cough.

  “And don’t worry about strangers. There ain’t any. They’re all gone.”

  “All—meaning?”

  The man shrugged. “All of them. Todo el mundo. Not that there were many to begin with.”

  “I’m Dave, by the way,” he repeated, flashing his best smile. “And you are—?”

  The man looked up at him, dark eyes pondering over the meaning of a name. “Nawat. Means left-handed.”

  David beamed. “Hey, that’s cool. I’m a lefty, too.”

  The man turned back to the fire. “I’m not.”

  “Ah.” All right, then.

  David scrambled back to the jeep and retrieved his water bottle. He wondered about the empty 5-gallon tanks in his trunk, but figured he could ask for a refill later. Maybe the guy will warm up a bit in a few hours. He started in the direction Nawat had pointed, gingerly taking in the place. A heap of blankets loomed from the pick-up bed, one side of the truck almost hugging the tree stump that kept it from toppling over. Huddled together as to withstand the dust-laden winds, the two horses stared at him with black, lazy eyes. They were both chewing solitary wisps of hay, their cream colored crests disarrayed, and their backs caked with red sand.