dEaDINBURGH: Origins (Din Eidyn Corpus Book 3) (4 page)

Chapter 5

Early Spring

 
2032

A loud clang rang out and bounced around the tiles of the room. Many of the people jumped in fright. Some of them disappeared, dropping through the large trapdoor that had fallen open six feet from the pristine white floor into a barely-lit tunnel below, forming a slippery white-tiled ramp into the darkness.

Many of the people in the room stood and gaped into the darkness, but only for a single second. Only until the loud scream of a child at the rear of the group snapped everyone’s attention around to the feverish group of almost-dead at the main doors. Now fully risen they were attacking the people closest to them with a bottomless, vicious hunger that tore flesh from bone and limb from socket. All of those present had seen the
show
. It didn’t need said, but one man, the still-laughing man, felt the need to shout out the obvious.

“We’re in dEaDINBURGH.”

He was positively gleeful – until a newly-reanimated Ringed tore his throat out with its clawed hands and devoured the flesh.

Like a wave of pestilence The Ringed moved throughout the room, tearing, biting and clawing with the strength and speed of the newly risen at the room’s panicked occupants.

Michelle MacLeod saw none of this. As soon as the trap door had slammed down into the darkness, she’d become a blur of movement. No thought, just deed. Launching herself along the tunnel, Michelle shouldered each of the people in her path aside. Leaving them in a wake of bewilderment, she cut through the darkness, one hand grabbing the loose waist of the men’s trousers she wore into a fist, the other reaching out in front of her, searching through the darkness.

Her fingers cracked against a wooden panel, causing a jolt of nerve pain to lightning up her arm and the panel to dislodge. A slice of very strong sunlight lasered through the gap she’d made. She saw the dust and dirt she’d swept along with her swirl around in the biblical shaft of light that cut through the tunnel’s blackness and took a second to shout back to the other people, if people they still were.

“This way. There’s a way out.”

Shouldering through the panel of MDF, Michelle clattered onto the earth outside and shut her eyes against the brightness of the day. Beneath her eyelids, her eyes still hurt, such was the intensity of the Edinburgh sunshine and the contrasting darkness of the tunnel. Placing a hand over her closed eyes, she gave her pupils the dangerous few seconds they needed to contract and then tentatively peered from beneath her eyelids.

The world was a cacophony of colours in the air and in the flora and fauna. She looked into a wild part of the countryside. Trees and bushes, grasses and shrubs, all filled with bright berries, flowers and fruit, shone alongside a straight, concrete path cutting through the beauty of the landscape. The fauna, perhaps a hundred yards along the path, hadn’t noticed her yet, but with the screaming coming along the tunnel behind her, their desiccated faces and mouldering teeth would turn her way soon.

Michelle blinked stupidly into the sun and let out a quiet sneeze. She’d always been a sun-sneezer. Her friends had mocked her playfully for it, but she’d always liked the trait she shared with her mother. In this place it was no longer a cute quirk of genetics: it was a bloody liability.

 
Her eyes darted to a meadow to her right and picked out the unmoving body of a dead, truly dead, Ringed. She moved with speed towards the partially-rotted pile of bones and decayed flesh that not even the maggots feasted on.

Picking up the fleshiest part she could see – badly putrefied quadriceps – Michelle covered her exposed flesh and already rancid clothing in the black, jelly-like fluids of the decaying Ringed. She coated her face, and carefully applied congealed fluid that had once been blood as though it were her favourite make-up. Taking her time, she flicked away the little clots that threatened to make her vomit despite the state of cold calculation her mind had entered, and smoothed foul, blackened paste-like flesh over her own skin, raking it through her hair as though she were applying the most luxurious of oil treatments. When Michelle had finished her task she looked as though she’d fallen into a container of rotted offal.

Taking a belt from the trousers of The Ringed she’d coated herself in, Michelle tied it around her waist, gathering the folds of fabric together before hurting her waist with the tightness of the leather. She shut herself off to the loud moans of dusty hunger and the wet tear of cracked teeth on living flesh coming from the cycle path at the tunnel’s exit.

 
Nothing to do. Nothing I can do. Just move.

Years of images flooded her mind once more. Information on operations she’d been privy to as a board member of the UKBC flooded her mind, along with detailed layouts, blueprints and maps of the dead city.
 

Subconsciously she placed her hand above her slightly swollen uterus, absorbed strength and purpose from it, decided on a destination and used the other gift her mother had given her. A lifelong stamina athlete, Michelle MacLeod ran like she’d never run in her whole life.

Chapter 6

Early Spring

 
2032

After three hours of combined hard running – when none of The Ringed were nearby – and excruciatingly slow shambling – when their dusty, milk-filmed gaze fell upon her – Michelle reached the lower Banshee Labyrinth, a former underground bar whose site had utilised an underground chamber or vault left behind from the Middle Ages. Approaching the smaller double doors to the left of the main entrance, Michelle placed her right index finger onto a lichen-covered but very modern-looking keypad. Closing her eyes she searched for fleeting memories of documents, meetings and data she’d been privy to in her role as Director of Human Rights with the UKBC. Finally her brain offered up a six-digit code and her fingers moved. Smiling as a green light beeped and a heavy lock disengaged, the gore-covered former director glanced quickly up and down the length of the narrow, cobbled street before pushing through the doors into the relative coolness and safety of the former bar and present UKBC communications hub.

Placing both of her hands on the heavy door, Michelle pushed slowly but firmly on them, bringing the doors together and feeling for the lock which she slid back into place. Refitted in the early days of dEaDINBURGH being broadcast, The Hub was one of the most secure facilities the company had built. The bunker’s primary function was to serve as a relay station for all of the newsfeeds, footage, images and sound streaming from the cameras, both mobile and stationary, throughout the city.

Once a year The Hub was occupied by technicians for three-month shifts. The technicians were brought into the area by tunnel from the main complex out at Little France and spent their twelve-week isolation in The Hub maintaining and upgrading the hardware and the software so crucial to the content of the
show
. In her role, Michelle had assisted in planning the safe transport of the technicians through the purpose-built tunnels to Cowgate. Competition between techs for placement in The Hub was fierce, simply because the bonus offered was so high.

 
Michelle leaned back against the secure doors and sat on the dusty concrete floor of the massive chamber. She cried silently for almost an hour.

Finally, exhausted, shivering and defeated, she rose to her feet. The last of her sobs blubbed out and she whined like an infant who’d been crying uncontrollably despite having long ago forgotten why they’d begun. She almost laughed, but gasped again to stifle it, fearing that she was losing the tenuous thread of reality she clung to. Her hand shook with cold and fear as it reached for the power switch at the left of the entrance she’d used. An itch at the back of her mind told her to switch it on, as the windows and doors were specifically designed to not allow a scrap of light, heat or sound to escape from the underground hub of blinking red LEDs and busy processors. The part of herself that had been in charge since the white room’s trapdoor fell said
leave it.

She listened to that voice. It had got her this far. Wrapping her arms around herself, Michelle staggered towards a large couch she could see bathed in the greens and reds of the clicking and whirring systems. She lay across the cold leather, pulled a heavy, woollen throw from the rear of the couch over her trembling body and slept.

Chapter 7

Early Spring

2032

With heavy limbs and heart, Michelle woke twenty hours later and returned to the master power switch. She had no idea if night or day awaited her outside, nor of how long she’d slept, but in the safety and darkness of The Hub, time was her least pressing concern. Her stomach growled and sent a wave of cramp across her abdomen. She was just shy of four months pregnant. Developing foetuses didn’t tolerate long fasts.

Pulling down on the master lever, Michelle winced as cold, clinical, bright light flooded the chamber. Bats flew from their perches and retreated deeper into the dungeon, perhaps to a former keg store. Dust sparkled like Christmas in the halogen glow as she gradually opened her tightly-shut lids to take in the room.

The high, dome-shaped ceiling, carved from solid rock, was covered with massive halogen floodlights whose harsh light bathed the room in unnatural brightness. Michelle took in her surroundings. Most of the processers and servers were covered loosely with light, thin dustsheets that did little to block the blinking lights she’d noted upon entering The Hub, but succeeded in keeping the worst of the centuries of dust from clogging vents and fans. She couldn’t help but conjure an image of Chris Nolan’s batcave.

To the rear of the chamber was an office area. Box files, stacked tidily atop each other, lined a wall, and several desks with laptops, their charging lights blinking, filled the rest of the area. Walking unsteadily and with her throw still guarding against the coldness of the former dungeon, Michelle explored the remainder of the chamber, finding a sleeping area with comfortable-looking bunks, a shelf holding around a hundred fiction books of various genres and a functioning halogen heater.

Michelle flipped several switches on the heater. Pulling a comfortable, reclining chair towards it, she sat upright, bathing her hands in the orange glow. It took almost thirty minutes for the warmth to reach her bones and longer still for the chill in her spine to melt.

Standing once more, Michelle made her way through to the final area she’d yet to explore and found herself whispering a prayer.
Please let the stores have been restocked.

Reaching the storeroom door, she found a heavy steel doorway with a spinning wheel mechanism in the centre. She closed her eyes, offering up one final bargain to God.
Let the stores have been restocked
.
Let there be food, and I swear I’ll thank you every day.
The wheel turned smoothly on its spindle. Michelle shoved it inwards and groped around the wall inside the door for a switch. Clicking the lights on, she gasped.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with supplies made her think of Christmas for the second time. Dried cereals, long-life UHT milk, massive containers of water, dried fruit and dozens upon dozens of tinned goods. Peaches, meat, vegetables, beans, spaghetti – more than enough to last a single person for months. A long, slow sigh escaped her lips and some of the tension she’d been feeling since waking in the white room melted away with the frost in her bones. She could survive. She could feed her unborn child.

Scanning around the rest of the store, Michelle found good stocks of various supplies. Matches, camping stoves, duct tape and boxes of clothes which seemed to have come from the Salvation Army HQ in the next building.

She broke open a box of Mars bars and groaned like one of the hungry Ringed as she chewed the first mouthful. The creamy, sugary chocolate lifted her spirits, making anything seem possible.

Michelle closed the storeroom door behind her and went looking for bathroom facilities. Finding a small washroom and toilet in the next ante-chamber, she was unsurprised to discover that running water filled the toilet and gushed through the taps. The company hadn’t bothered to turn the running water off into the city. Why would they? They needed their survivors alive to entertain. Hot water wasn’t an option, though, not even here in The Hub
.

Michelle reached into the shower cubicle and turned the flow onto maximum. Noting that a large, only slightly grubby towel hung on the towel rack, she set about removing the crusted clothing she’d woken up in and had so efficiently glued to her own body with the decayed fluids of The Ringed from the meadow.

Velcro-like tearing noises rasped as she peeled the shirt and trousers from her. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, Michelle laughed out loud at the sight of her gore-covered body. Her laugh held no humour; it was just a release. Tear tracks had ploughed rivulets along the remains on her cheeks, but aside from those relatively clear streaks, she was coated in filth. She looked wild, half-dead and crazed. She looked like one of The Ringed, which, she supposed, had been the point.

Stepping into the shower, she found a bar of carbolic soap on a shelf and used it to scrub her body and hair clean of the dead matter. Whatever was coming to her, she wouldn’t be leaving the safety of The Hub for the foreseeable future. If… when she chose to leave, she’d take steps to make sure that she didn’t look or smell so clean, but for now, clean was what she needed to be.

The intense cold finally drove her from the shower after fifteen minutes of hard scrubbing. Large towel wrapped around her, she made her way back to the storage room in search of clean clothes. Michelle found suitable items in the fourth box she looked in. Dressed finally in combat trousers with a belt yanked tight at the too-big waist, long kilt socks, vest, long-sleeve T-shirt and woollen pullover, Michelle fished a fleece hat from the box and pulled it over her head and ears. Making her way to the office area, she spent an hour or so flipping through documents, reading faxes – the primary means of communication to The Hub
– and trying to figure out if she could or should attempt to communicate with the outside world.

The Hub
had been installed primarily as a relay station and as such hadn’t been designed as a communication centre, despite the thousands of cables, fibres and feeds flowing into and out of the facility. Information and data, images and footage flowed in, were sorted and collated, then flowed back out again. The Hub’s computers weren’t enabled for internet access; they’d been specifically designed to not be able to communicate with the outside world, a measure insisted upon by Fraser Donnelly as a precaution, in case unauthorised personnel gained access to the facility. The technicians who occupied the centre were required to be isolated from the outside world for the duration of their stay. Company policy.

The image of Fraser hit her hard. She pushed all thoughts of him away violently, lest her anger shattered her logic. Absent-mindedly she rubbed her belly gently and considered her options.

She was no tech expert. Sure, with all of the data flowing through, there would have to be a way to use the feed to communicate with the outside world, but the knowledge to do so was not hers. Michelle considered sabotaging the systems, thus forcing technicians to be dispatched to investigate. What would be the point though? Even if the techs came, even if she could convince them that she wasn’t a survivor from inside the city but a company director from UKBC, it was clear that the company wanted her here. She’d only be putting the techs in the same position she herself was in.

With no immediate danger present, Michelle’s mind had lowered the shields around her sanity that had allowed the pragmatism that had brought her safely to The Hub to surface. Now, here and safe, the reconfirmation of the betrayal jolted Michelle to her knees and threatened to take her senses from her. No longer able to hold back the torrent of memories, they became an unstoppable storm – a deluge lashing her mind with unwelcome thoughts of the very recent past.

An office clinch with Fraser several months ago. An unplanned blip in their otherwise professional relationship. A moment of need shortly after her father’s death, and Fraser, an uncharacteristic shoulder to cry on, had made her feel something other than grief when she needed it. A one-off with consequences unexpected.
 

Weeks passed, papers crossed her desk, corporate wheels turned and people died inside the fences of dEaDINBURGH as surely as rainfall slanted on Scotland. She cursed her own failures in helping the people inside the dead zone.

 
In her office in The Gherkin, London, a phone beeped, the discreet contact from a security officer whose conscience was bothering him, begging her, the Head of Human Rights, to help him. She did. They met.

Michelle listened to what he had to say. She examined the digital logbooks he produced on his tablet. She told him – told herself – that it couldn’t be real. He showed her the raw footage from the security cameras inside the tunnels of the former hospital in Little France in the south of the dead city, and she threw heavy items around her office, cracking the plasterboard, scaring the man.

“I can’t live with this anymore,” he told her.

She wanted to throw something at him.

Within the hour she took the evidence to Fraser. Who else would she go to? Alone together in his office, he looked genuinely, truly upset as the images and the data passed as a reflection of the screen in his eyes, wobbling with the new moisture there. The pain carved onto his face. His voice trembled, just for a second. And then it was strong once more.

 
“I’ll deal with this immediately. Go home, Michelle. I’ll call you in an hour.”

She’d planned to tell him about the baby. Their baby. She would tell him soon, when this monstrous abuse of power had been dealt with.

Michelle went home and cried. She’d became angry; very angry. How badly she’d let down the people inside. How had she missed the importing of new victims? Why? Who?

Fraser called within the hour, as promised.

“We have to keep this quiet. I have several agents I trust on loan from a government contact. They’ve started investigating. They’ll want to speak to you as part of their enquiries. Are you home now? They’ll be with you soon…”

Michelle had answered the door, eyes rimmed in red, grateful to see the agents. She’d felt... unsafe. Three seconds after she opened the door, Michelle MacLeod crumpled to the floor as a needle was injected into her neck. She woke in the white room.

On her knees in the huge underground chamber, Michelle felt completely abandoned. She felt as though she’d been punched, hard, as the single inescapable fact kept screaming in her ear.
He was the only one you told. He put you here.