Shards (9 page)

Standing at face level to
display screen D5, one of dozens glowing with ghostly light,
Forrester inspected the readouts from behind plastic safety
glasses. His glasses shone with a purple tint in the beam from the
spotlights above.

Satisfied with the energy
outputs, he shuffled over to screen D3 to check on the input levels
before taking a break. The display glowed green across his pallid
skin. Unlike the techs, such as Forrester, the machine never
rested. It was inexorable and single-minded.

"Jacobs!" Forrester called out.
The words boomed throughout the warehouse.

He pulled his attention away
from the display to scan the vault for signs of the other
technician.

Except for the myriad of dark
shapes and interconnected tubes that comprised the machine, the
warehouse stood empty. Reinforced concrete surrounded him---and the
machine---on four sides. A single cable, much thicker than the rest,
snaked from the centre of the machine and along a wall until it
disappeared into the shadowed ceiling above.

He traced the cable's length
with his gaze, squinting as his eyes met the network of
interweaving girders supporting dozens of high-powered spotlights.
In the absence of windows, the spotlights provided the only source
of light. Centred on the sprawl of the machine, the lights cast
pools of darkness outside their direct beams.

"Jacobs!" he called again.

Two doors accessed the
warehouse. The main door was a monstrosity---twin titanium monoliths
that allowed admittance to the outside world. The other,
inconsequential in comparison and set well away from the main
entry, was a regular timber door that opened onto the staff
area.

The swish of his lab coat
contrasted to the machine's hum as he strode toward that door. In
the coat, Forrester, now the senior technician, almost felt the
scientist his dress suggested. It was all a charade, of course,
designed to impress the bureaucrats on their quarterly inspections.
In his heart, he was nothing more than a glorified sparky. The
pretence sat well enough with him.

"Jacobs, where the hell are
you?" He reached the staff door.

Every word and every step was
magnified by the immense space.

The click of the knob echoed
through the warehouse, announcing his entry into the staff
area.

The common room opened up
before him. The duty roster was only ever two people, yet somehow
the place had been trashed.

"Jacobs?" He picked at the
papers and rubbish strewn about.

Several of the chairs were
knocked over and the table had been rammed against the wall at an
awkward angle. Soundproofing must have prevented him from hearing
the commotion while he was out with the machine.

The small television was
propped on the counter next to the microwave. The volume was down,
the screen filled with actors he vaguely recalled. He didn't have
much time for TV these days. It was Jacobs who insisted on bringing
it in---to relieve the boredom, he had said. A cracked pair of
goggles lay on the floor nearby.

"Great." He planted hands on
hips and shook his head.

Forrester retrieved an
overturned chair, returned the table to its rightful place, and sat
down. The purple tint to his goggles was disorienting when he
glanced sideways. Maintaining his composure, he held his eyes
straight ahead, watching the door to the bathroom."Jacobs." He slid
his hands into his coat pockets. "I know you're in there. We need
to talk."

Cursing rose from the far side
of the bathroom door.

A bead of sweat formed on
Forrester's brow, rolling into a bushy eyebrow.

"Come on, Jacobs, let's talk,"
he coaxed.

Porcelain smashed inside the
bathroom.

Sighing, Forrester dabbed at
his forehead with a handkerchief from his pocket.

The door opened inwards,
awkward on its splintered timber frame.

Standing in the doorway, with
one leg saturated, was the disheveled form of Jacobs. His stringy
hair was plastered to his head.

"Pissed yourself," Forrester
muttered.

Jacobs' lab coat splayed when
he stepped into the common room, revealing a ripped shirt. His
chest was scratched. The smell of faeces clogged the air.

"Soiled yourself, too," said
Forrester.

Edging closer to the table,
Jacobs met his gaze with frantic, blood-shot eyes. His hands were
hidden behind his back.

"What happened?" Forrester
looked him up and down.

"You know what happened!"
Jacobs spat.

Forrester studied him, fresh
beads of perspiration on his face the only sign of his concern.

Jacobs' lip twisted into a
snarl, betrayed by the slight quiver of his chin. Like Forrester,
his face had broken out in sweat.

"That damn buzzing!" Jacobs
pressed his palm over an ear and screwed up his face, leaving his
other arm behind his back. Something metal scraped on the ground.
"I've gotta get outta here!"

"Were you watching TV
again?"

Something wavered in Jacobs'
eyes but was snuffed out. He nodded and looked away. When his gaze
fixed again on Forrester, the snarl returned.

"Mr. Morgenstern isn't going to
be happy about this mess, Jacobs," Forrester lectured, as if to a
child. "You've met the people he sends to clean up messes."

Jacob's didn't even flinch,
clearly too far under the machine's influence to care.

"Why did you watch the TV when
I told you not to?" Forrester asked, almost rhetorically. "Where
were your glasses?"

"Why do you care?"

"Fool! You've been here a few
weeks! You know what the machine does."

Jacobs muttered something, a
guttural word that never made it to Forrester' ear.

"How does it feel?" Forrester
leaned forward. "With the selective targeting, I never see the
results."

"Can't you hear the humming?
Make it shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!" Jacobs grimaced and
balled his fist over his ear again.

Oblivious to Jacobs's rant,
Forrester fancied he really could hear the humming, despite the
soundproofing in the staff room. Jacobs was right. Everywhere he
went, the hum, or its phantom, was his constant companion: the
legacy of such close proximity to the machine.

"Yes." Forrester closed his
eyes and strained for the hum. "That's how it gets into your
system. The resonance built up through the TV. Tell me, were you
watching Channel Four?"

Jacobs didn't reply. He just
stood there, lost in his own inner world, scowling and staring
though him from across the table.

Forrester felt calm settle on
him as he, in turn, studied the younger man, even when Jacobs
revealed the fire-axe from behind his back.

"I bet you didn't know,"
Forrester said, "the machine has a one hundred percent success rate
with the test subjects. Within an hour of watching certain
channels, usually Four, every subject, every single one of them,
murdered their friends and loved ones in the most barbaric ways
imaginable. It has other side-effects as---"

The axe whistled through the
air, biting into the tabletop mere inches in front of Forrester. He
flinched but remained seated, searching the frenzied eyes of his
colleague for any signs of redemption. Watching Jacobs rip the axe
from the table with violent force, eyeing him like a snack, he knew
nothing human remained.

"Stop!" Forrester produced a
tiny remote control from his coat. "One press of this button and
the guards will be here in ten seconds."

"That's a pencil, you psycho!"
Jacobs screamed, in the throes of delusion. Leering like an untamed
beast, he raised the axe again.

An explosion rocked the room
from beneath the table, driving Jacobs back mid-swing. He thumped
to the ground, losing his grip on the axe. It clattered along the
floor.

A powdered hole was obvious in
Forrester's coat pocket when he rose from his seat. Removing the
gun, he walked in solemn procession over to the prone body of his
colleague. A pool of dark blood seeped onto the floor from the hole
in Jacobs' side.

Jacobs clutched at Forrester's
leg, wrapping vice-like fingers around his ankle and squeezing.
Forrester kicked out in pain but was unable to shake the man's
grip.

"It's not too late," Jacobs
stammered through gritted teeth. "Fight it."

Glazing over, Forrester
absently dropped the pencil from his trembling hand. It rattled on
the floor before rolling into the expanding tide of blood.

Forrester blinked. His purpose
was clear once more.

Two more shots boomed through
the common room. Rocked by a series of spasms, Jacobs relaxed his
grip. Blood ebbed from the bullet wounds in his chest, soon
mingling with the original pool of blood by his hip. The room had
filled with the smell of gunpowder.

Forrester shook off the
twitching hand and stepped away before the blood could touch his
shoe. He stared at the body, all the while pocketing the gun and
circling well clear until he reached the door.

In moments, he was free of the
staff room and standing in front of the machine. Caressing the
finish of the sleek central hub, he was surprised to find it warm
to the touch.

"That was number six. They're
going to be asking more questions before they send the next tech."
He stroked the black metal. "One of these days, my sweet, it will
just be the two of us."

The machine hummed to him as
Jacob's said it would, corrupting every corner of the complex with
its sinister song.

* * *

Burning a Hole in the Sky

"Mr President, the vampires
have turned back our assault on Sydney."

"Turned back?" President Smythe
raised pupilless eyes to his aide. It was a sight Darren Robilliard
would never get used to.

"Massacred," Darren murmured.
His thoughts turned to his sister Valerie, still trapped in a camp
to be bled like an animal. A fate the President had shared before
his escape.

"What happened?" The
President's voice was atonal, emotionless.

"137th regiment pushed toward
the CBD from Campbelltown, distracting the vamps from our main
thrust down the Western Motorway."

"Did the army make it to
Parramatta?"

"Yes." Darren wiped his brow.
The humidity in the executive bunker below Capital Hill was almost
unbearable. "They liberated the camp there but met heavy
resistance."

"How far did the 137th
get?"

"They made it to the Bankstown
complex, where they were pinned down. Without their support, our
main mechanised infantry column didn't last long when the vamps
sprung their trap."

The President reclined in his
chair, lost in thought as he steepled his fingers together.
Whatever those thoughts were, they didn't touch his eyes. Nothing
did.

"Mr President?" Darren
prompted.

"What's the status of their
feeding camps?"

"The army didn't make it to
Homebush." Darren shook his head. "Reconnaissance flights confirm
the camps at the SCG, North Sydney, Chatswood, Newtown, and
Cronulla are still in operation. We suspect they're holding
thousands more in the CBD, concentrated around Martin Place."

"And the fighter sweep?"

"We cleansed twelve city blocks
and most of Redfern in the strafing run."

"Losses?"

"We gave them everything, but
when the vamps' magnetic arrays and missile defences kicked in,
they took out the entire wing. By all reports, it was a swift and
brutal fire-fight."

"Yes, fire ... that's the key
..." President Smythe trailed off and stared at the concrete
ceiling. The Australian flag hung limp behind him, its spirit as
defeated as Darren's.

"What do we do now?" Darren
gripped the edge of the desk in an uncharacteristic display of
emotion. They'd rolled the dice and lost. The defeat and the
emotional vacuum surrounding the President had all but sucked him
dry.

President Smythe tapped out
rapid-fire commands on the keyboard embedded in his desk. The
low-slung monitor flashed the instructions up too fast for Darren
to read. Lines of light cast the President in a ghostly data
mask.

"Sir?"

"Today will be great day in the
history of the Australasian republic." President Smythe wove his
fingers together and resumed his meditative pose.

"How do you mean?"

"A new dawn will break over
Sydney at midnight tonight. Our last remaining strike bomber will
drop its nuclear payload on the city."

"You can't! There's more than a
million people still trapped there! My sister ..."

President Smyth eased his
collar open to reveal twin red moons on his neck surrounded by a
web of puckered veins. "They're already dead. She's already dead.
All cattle now, like I was."

"But you escaped! Maybe we can
free the rest?" Darren tightened his grip on the desk.

"Did I?"

Darren edged away. The flag,
the phoney bookcase, and all the trappings of presidential power
stood mute to his turmoil. "What are you saying?"

The President stared at his
aide with those unreadable black beads. He tapped at a single key
in compulsive repetitions. Within seconds, the metal door slid
open, admitting two Kevlar-suited soldiers. Both brandished compact
sub-machineguns. Vials of holy water were slung around their
necks.

"Remove him." Smythe waved a
hand at Darren.

The soldiers complied,
clutching Darren by the arms before he could react. He thrashed as
they dragged him through the door. The scuffle resounded to the
echo of stomping boots.

"Don't do this!" Darren's cry
reverberated through the bunker. "Don't ... Valerie ..."

His final glimpse as he was
dragged away was of President Smythe's dead eyes staring back at
him and the Australian flag standing wilted in the glow of Smythe's
computer screen.