Day 52 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 1 (1763 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Darwin's Game

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 1

There was no return address on the envelope, there were no postmarks or stamps or any courier tags on the outside, just a plain A4 envelope, with thick card inside it about the size of a disc cover. Someone must have delivered it by hand, there was no note on his desk, no one let him know he had a package, but here a thing had arrived on his desk to his attention.

A mysterious envelope with anonymous heritage showing up on his desk was an almost daily occurrence, he put it on the pile for the interns to sort through and decide what would be bubbled up to the featured wall today.

Jacob Edgerton worked in a shared office space in San Francisco, not in the city but out in the Mission District, where it was a little cheaper and easier to get settled without outlaying a huge amount of money. He was getting by with a couple of staff helping him man the service he ran on the internet, a news aggregation and blog opinion hub where they tried to make sense of the news without bias. Or at least that was the plan when they started out.

Jacob and his partner Blake Hilliard had founded the site, “facts alone” out of a desire to not have to find their news in between jokes on the saitirical late night comedy programs that regularly embarrassed the 'actual' news media with more reasoned and balanced coverage, along with drug and dick jokes. So they started pulling news feeds and made their own news aggregation site that had a focus on data and information and no commentary.

They did not have reporters, they had themselves and some clever algorithms that helped them break stories down into just the facts that were verified or actual rather than couched opinions. They were probably left leaning if you had to put a label on them, but they also held some quite conservative views on crime and punishment. They disagreed on a a lot of things and the people who met them, wanting to label them or pigeon hole them found it hard to do it consistently as they were so very similar, yet poles apart. It made them a good filter for what they were trying to do.

News stories that came in through them went out in vastly reduced forms, they were boiled down to the facts only and they removed all the hyperbole and opinion that coloured almost everything that was consumed in mass market media. They and the generation they catered to, had just had enough of the language, the spin and the 'balance' that tipped dramatically one way or another. They found a corner of the market where people like them looked to see what was behind all the front and words that other news shows had. All emotive language was removed, disaster and tragedy were never used, nor were charged terms of judgement like heinous or evil. They took it the other way too and removed all the over hyped positivity like things that were 'once in a lifetime' or 'positively received' and anything that was not quantifiable was just not there.

It was not perfect but it was a start towards honesty and that resonated with a large section of younger viewers fed up with being sold news rather than being told it. That was their motto, when they printed business cards “Telling News, not Selling News.”

Jacobs bugbear was the phrase “some people say”, there was no hiding behind anonymous sources in Facts Alone, if you didn't want to say it publicly, then they would not be the mouthpiece for you. They did not accept press releases as news, they were instantly suspicious when stories found them instead of being found by them. Above all they wanted integrity and honesty back in the media.

That was why it was a day or so before an intern opened that envelope and found that there was a disc inside and that it needed to be seen straight away.

Jacob was talking to Blake over a coffee in the conference room they had booked for meetings in the shared office, they made time to meet once a week and review the most critiqued articles and feeds on their site. They had plenty of volunteers who for a small fee or a chance to access and be part of the new paradigm, assisted in the filtering and re-packaging of news back into facts. The more feedback they got from left, right and the audience they actually wanted, the more they sanity checked their approach. Pissing people off who thought they were being evil, or blind or plain stupid was perfect in their eyes. Provoking that kind of reaction usually meant that they were on the money. When words were charged and interpretable different ways they would examine them and add it to the learning dictionary that the software used to de-charge the copy of any bias. This worked because people wanted the facts, and when anything else crept in they protected it fiercely.

Susan was 19 and studying journalism, learning how to produce news during school hours, and learning to reconstruct it in her work hours. She stood in the doorway of the conference room and knocked on the door jamb to get Jacob's attention. She reported to Jacob, no one reported to Blake, because he was a grumpy and mean person to work for with a short temper and and ill humour. Blake was easily irritated into losing his temper and ranting at the drop of a hat. Jacob was easily irritated into finding a solution. Between them they had passion and logic for truth, they just found it on a different path to the same destination.

“What?” Blake had been in a dark mood since he had arrived, later than usual due to a car problem that only served to wind him up and take his temper out on everyone he met from that point of his day onwards. Jacob had seen him posting on social media all morning and knew that by the time that he presented at the office it would be all drama and noise, so he booked a hurried meeting, bringing it forward a day. Blake knew he was being a douche bag, but he was downing in the black mood and it was hard to not circle the drain. They knew each other well enough to yell and bitch and moan and think nothing of the words exchanged, but think of it as an emotional blood letting.

“Shut up dickhead. What is it Susie?” Jacob smiled at her and gave the finger to his business partner and friend who managed to scowl and smile simultaneously back at him.

“Um, I think you should see this.” Susie was holding the disc very carefully with a finger through the centre hole and one pinching the outer edge, like it was precious or dangerous, maybe both.

“I'll look at it afterwards, just leave it on my desk and I'll get to it soon. Thanks, Susan.” Jacob smiled wide knowing how much this annoyed his partner. Susan held the disc and did not move.

“He said he'll look at it later.” Blake growled but then he saw the look on her face and he knew something was up. Normally the interns and junior staff would blush or cringe when he acted like the way he always did, it took them a long while to realise that it was just his way of dealing with his anger an frustration, and how to deal with that themselves. Susan was still quite new and shy, while she felt very comfortable with Jacob, like everyone did, she was a long way from that with Blake, and he knew it, played on it and secretly enjoyed that impenetrable facade that made 90 percent of people leave him alone.

Susan's face was pale and white, like she was not going to cry because whatever it was that affected her was shocking not necessarily emotional, but shocking. She was having trouble processing something, and it was obviously a big thing. Blake may not have thought much of her in public, but in private he had thought her sensible and capable when pushed the right way. He had hopes for her being a future part of the Facts Alone if she could get over the shy part and just get on the with the job.

The pale, drained look though spoke volumes. Jacob saw it too, but it was Blake who now reached for the disc and looked at it.

It was a plain DVD disc, and written on it in permanent marker were the words “Darwin's Game” and the numbers “1.1”.

“Darwin's Game?” Jacob was reading the disc over Blake’s shoulder and then moved to turn the monitor on, connecting his laptop to the Wi Fi media server, connecting to the big screen. Blake handed over the disc after turning it up and back a few times looking for clues to content, but finding none.

“You better come see this you guys!” Susan yelled that to the office, and a few heads popped up and saw through the glass walls of the conference room that the bosses were there and putting something on the screen. Within a few minutes half the staff present were crowding the door with grins and eager looks on their faces, while Susan now looked like she was going to be ill. Blake and Jacob were sitting at the table while everyone else stood.

Susan pulled up a chair and sat between them both, cradled her head in her hands and peeked through her fingers at the screen waiting for it to play.

Jacob looked around the staff assembled. “Now unless you want to get a seriously loud “Shut the Fuck Up” from Blake here, you will want to keep your comments to yourself until afterwards.” A few of the people started to turn on tablets and notebooks to make notes as they went, this was not the first time they had been over a new story as a group, they were experience and this usually meant something juicy.

Blake took the remote and with a final glance at his business partner and the shaken intern he pressed play.

The screen was black, slowly the words faded into view.

“Darwins Game.”

They faded away again, then a second title else came on screen.

“Episode 1.”

Second Project on hold - Book Three starts Today

Day 52 of my year of writing and struggling with no clear vision of what the book is about, though I have the ideas they are competing and dragging away from each other, none more viable or more natural than the other.

That approach worked for me on the first book, it also worked well when I wrote back in my 20's. The Heist story was well formed in my head (but then again so was Only Laugh at first) so it was a matter of making the pieces in parts and finding the links to make them whole.

Not sure with the Babel that it's not a case of a good idea looking for a story instead of a story looking for and way to tell itself.

I'll think about it for a bit, get to grips with the themes I was aiming at and come back to it later.

In the meantime a book I wrote pieces of back in the early 2000's again based on an idea that wanted fleshing out, I feel now is time for a rewrite, not from the original manuscript but from the formed plot in my head.

I have a tendency to write big ideas, usually way too big for the stories they are actually in, but that's part of the process as I'm less interested in making a product and more interested in producing, as pretentious as that is.

So Darwin's Game comes back, and the piecemeal nature of the story unfolding should suit this episodic daily writing lark.

-Wayne.

Day 51 - Babel - Chapter 13 (1587 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 13

“You have to do something.”

Victor was watching people walk through the city streets, like zombies heading towards the waterfront. He had seen them since yesterday, once or two at first and he took shots at them, striking the ground at their feet and kicking up the pavement in shards. He was stunned to see not reaction whatsoever and not even a missed step. He took a range of shots all around the feet of the second person and they simply walked through them, the shattered pieces of concrete scratching at the shins of the man walking calmly down Queen Street.

The man walked on with blood dripping slightly behind him, leaving a few spots of a trail and as the first did not break stride.

The voice that was telling him about the aliens, giving him clues as to their intention was very agitated about their arrival and what they were doing.

“This is exactly what I told you would happen. This is it Victor, this is the end. They mean you harm, they mean you all harm.”

He had been hearing the voice for a few days, he had tried asking it questions but it seemed to be exactly what the voice said it was.

“I'm trying to help. You can hear me, I can talk to you and help you.”

Victor had questions of course, but it was no good if he could not be heard. He just listened and used whatever information the voice gave him.

He had imagined at first that it was some kind of secret government agency. Something with technology that could pull this off, but it did not sound professional or military enough, not organised. The voice sounded desperate to be heard, to help and to affect the outcome of the Alien invasion. His second theory was some kind of fifth column, an opposition or resistance within the Alien ranks, which would explain how this telepathic voice could be put directly into his head, but not necessarily be able to hear him back. Obviously the Aliens had limitations, they did not appear to have weapons, not in the conventional sense anyway.

There had been no sign of any Alien beings, which suggested weakness and fear to Victor. The voice backed this idea up with little things he would say about the cautiousness and the deliberate measures they had taken to not fight humanity, head on.

The Babel was a weapon, the voice had told him that it was a genetic softener, something to make resistance and fighting too hard to do. That it had been planned a long time in advance, they had been watching for years. They had brought viruses before, some stronger than others and they were chemically engineered to prey on human weaknesses. The one they had settled on, the Babel though was the Neutron Bomb of viruses, it was devastating but left so much intact, but useless.

“They have plans for you, they have plans for the Babel. They'll take out the ones who are immune, the ones the can't control. The ones that resist, the ones that are too strong.”

This was what he had suspected for some time, something was definitely going on. Stragglers were making it through his barricades, and finding their way in like water pressing at a dam, looking for cracks to seep through. Parnell was barricaded and blocked, the motorway gulleys were as closed off as they could be, and that only really left north, the bridge and the bays.

He toured the southern and eastern entryways to the downtown area and found them sealed, but with the people there walking around the edges, heading to the north and looking for that crack.

He got to the the bridge and there was already quite a few people there, and he could see once he was high enough, that all the way up the shore there was a line of people stretching and thin, but back further, people slowing down and more joining in the crowd. Before long it would be hundreds, and not long after tens of thousands, if there were that many people left in the world.

Victor took guns, explosives and enough gear to seal the bridge with him and snuck through the people now making their way into the lower edges of the Viaduct and finding cracks in his barricades to get into downtown. There was maybe a hundred people there by the time he got back to his building, and that doubled by the time he made it to the bridge.

No one seemed to recognise his existence, he walked amongst the zombies that sightlessly walked past him, and though he kept his gun safety 'off' and in his hand, he felt sure he would not need it.

“You have to stop them. It's for their own good. They want to do … bad things to you. To them. They are not in control like you. They cannot resist, they cannot do it themselves.”

Victor could see that what he was being told was true. He was unsure if he could truly trust the voice in his head, but in this instance they seemed to be on the same page. This was not good and something needed to be done.

“You have to stop them getting in. They want them here, they are bringing them here for a reason. You need to not let them get all these people.”

The bridge was the key. Victor stared at it and then back up at St Mary's Bay. He had blocked College Hill Road effectively, it was the entry point where the bridge joined up with St Mary's that was the biggest gap. He could seal that, he could seal the rest pretty well, he had done already.

Victor had left the bridge open as a potential escape route if he needed it. He had a plan on destroying it behind himself if he had to abandon the city centre, he knew where and how to plant the explosives to bring it down if need be. He did not expect to be on this side of the problem though, he had always thought it would come to fleeing, not to making a fortress of Down town.

There was a lot of people on the bridge though. A lot. Slack eyed and without any will, they may not even be alive anymore, but looking at hundreds of people marching like that it was not an easy call to make to blow the bridge supports from under them.

He picked a person at random and stood in front of him, the person stopped at first, then walked around. He got in the way of the person about twenty feet behind him, this time a woman and she did the same thing, so he moved to be always in her way, eventually placing a hand on the forehead of the woman and pressing hard. There was little resistance and she stopped in her tracks until he moved his hand and then, she kept walking.

“You're wasting time, there are more people on the bridge, you are putting more lives in danger!”

Victor knew the voice was right, again and he took several deep breaths and pulled the trigger on the detonator switch.

There was a compressive thump and he felt the air change as the explosives ignited and blew out the support struts in quick succession.

He watched the buckling, the overwhelmingly loud screech of metal and concrete sliding against each other, protesting the force of the explosions and gravity pushing them in on each other. There had been a few bodies thrown clear by the explosions, and the ones on this side of it, got up and walked on. A few were still walking when the ground fell from under them, Victor lost count of how many exactly went into the water from is handiwork, he stopped counting almost immediately after starting, the knowledge was something he neither needed nor wanted.

The people in the water sank or floated but made no effort to swim to safety. He could see that there was no way to save or assist all of them, so he made the decision to save none of them. It was as he turned his back that he saw that the people lining the hills walking and poking at the barricades for an opening to get in had stopped moving.

He looked back at the bridge and there were a dozen or so people on the very edge, standing there, behind them everyone in the distant 'queue' were also stopped, the Aliens had stopped moving everyone together. Over the other side of the barricaded streets, the ones who had been heading to the waterfront, to the Quays they were also stopped.

“That will slow them down. It will not stop them.”

He knew it was true.

Victor looked across the Gulf at the ship hanging in the sky above the Mountain Island of the Hauraki and wondered what on earth could even dent such a behemoth. He felt like an insect crawling on the arm of a giant. How long before he was slapped into a stain on it's skin?

“Its got to be done.”

Victor did not for the life of him know what “it” was, but for the sake of the people he had just drowned for their own good, “it” needed to be found.

Day 50 - Babel - Chapter 12 (1115 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 12

George watched maybe a hundred people drown, there was no way to get to them in time, no boats were where they were and it would have been impossible to drive to the bridge, cross through the hundreds if not thousands of people in the, and then get down to the water twenty or thirty feet below that. The explosion had been set on the struts, supporting beams or whatever those things were, George could not name. Near to the St Mary's bay landing end, where the bridge sloped down dramatically towards the jutting piece of land where the road turned towards the city again.

The explosions had taken out the first set of supporting infrastructure over the water, maybe fifty feet from the lands edge. The initial blast destroyed the supporting beams, cracked the road surface and jolted it enough to collapse the hold it had on the road, pushing down all it's weight onto the weakened grip, snapping, twisting and eventually crumbling down to the water with a splash.

The bodies of the people nearest the blast had been thrown clear and badly hurt, but not as badly as those who fell without the wits to swim for their lives. A minute or so passed where the walkers, slowly progressing in the fashion the Few watching had seen all the way to the City, walked off the edge and into the water. From where they were they could see no thrashing or splashing, no signs of saving themselves or others until as a unit everyone stopped in their tracks.

Barbara (Water) began to cry, George (Fire) could hear her behind him and thought that she was alone in her need, it was too unbelievable, all of this, to pass it off with a hug or a comforting embrace. This made no sense and it was unconscionable a thing to do, and it had to be someone doing it, right.

“It has to be someone.” George spoke his mind out loud, something he was not fond of doing, something he took great pains to avoid usually.

“What has to be someone?” Mountain was hugging Tree, who was now also crying, yet he was looking over at George, who was still staring at the bridge.

“I don't quite understand it.” He was shaking his head.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if they...” George (Fire) looked around at the other three, only Water and Mountain looked back at him, Tree still had her face buried in Mountain's shoulder, “... the Aliens, right?”

George looked back to the bridge “If they can control people, I mean really control people, which we have to assume its them... right?”

The others nodded, which George felt more than saw.

“Then it has to be someone else. I don't understand why anyone would blow up the bridge. Why anyone would kill all those people?”

“Who knows why they would do anything? They're not like us, they're aliens, remember?” Barbara (Water) had a very scared, angry scowl on her face.

“Weren't you the one all open arms and ...” This was the longest conversation, unplanned, that they had ever had, and the idea that they could spontaneously banter a conversation between them that was not about solving problems or educating through minimal means, was somehow out of reach.

“Until now. Until. This.” She looked away and then Mountain caught George's eye and rolled his skyward.

“No, he means that this can't have been the Aliens, this must have been us.”

“But we...:”

“Not US, US. US – humans US.”

“No, why would we …?” And then she caught George's original meaning, and his reasoning. “Oh, but we do don't we?”

The three of them said no more for a long while before Tree broke the silence.

“What if they were trying to save them?”

“Save them by killing them?” Barbara (Water) was less than impressed with Tree's eventual contribution to the discussion. “Funny way to save them.”

“Unless what they were going to is a fate worse than death.” Tree realised the cliché of that and followed it up quickly. “Or they thought it was, I mean we can do some stupid things when we are scared. We fight wars over nothing all the time, right? Over less.”

Silence fell again and all four of them, no one shedding tears any longer, stared at the bridge and the thousands of people lined up, spread out backwards down the motorway and up towards Lake Road, immobile and passive.

“There's a supermarket near here, I think it's just beyond the parking bays.” Mountain pointed behind them and they could see a parking lot with trolleys scattered helter skelter amongst the faded white lines. “Let's see if there's anything there, something to settle us maybe?”

The Few walked to the parking lot and found the partially burned supermaket, it looked like it had been fire-bombed but that only the front section had burned. George (Fire) picked his way in through the glass and aluminium framework and inside the market.

The inside was burned extensively for about twenty feet and then it had stopped, like someone had spayed soot and black paint over a section and left the remainder alone. By the look of the charred parts it had happened some time ago, and there were places, where there were burned outlines of things that had been removed. Most of the market had been gutted, but as they picked their way through the empty aisles, they found the rear of the market had a section that had collapsed in on itself, the sunshine pouring in through a hole above the tipped over shelves and amongst the plaster chunks and tiles.

When they pulled pieces out they found cans of fruit and soups, some baking goods, burst open mostly and rained on or mixed with other debris, but enough untouched food to make a meal for now and still have plenty left to take some supplies back to the Community.

“We can take this back, let's load it into the car.” George said to the others as he searched hoping for a can opener maybe hanging on one of the shelves as a helpful “also buy” item.

“Why?” Barbara was sounding morose.

“For the Community, I doubt that anyone has had...” And then he caught up with Barbara's reasoning in his own time. There was no one to take supplies back to.

They ate fruit salad from the plastic plates they found, opening the cans with a swiss army knife that Mountain had brought with him.

Day 49 - Babel - Chapter 11 (1720 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 11

The light coming from the doorway was diffuse, and hard to see clearly but it was still there. A dark room with more space than was necessary considering he was here, on his own with no furniture or any distinction other than a doorway in the wall. The light, soft as it was, already spread enough illumination about the room to see it was featureless and maybe fifty feet wide, and maybe the length as well. Philip had woken from an odd dream to find himself in this room, he had been in his new home with a family he had joined up with a year ago, taken in when the Babel came and caused havoc in his home town.

Christchurch had suffered heavy losses to the population after the Babel, people fled the city, disappeared as far away as they could into the plains, the hills and to other areas. Disaster struck very early on with a plane crash in Christchurch airport destroying the runway, and a number of aircraft hangared there. Without language the fire-fighters suffered a similar issue to the ones in Wellington unable to fight effectively and essentially cutting off the city from air travel, in or out. Christchurch hospital became the centre of attacks by a violent underclass who wanted access to drugs, gas and whatever they could lay their hands on. The hospital was stripped and emptied within days and the people fled, either away to the suburbs where they could get away from the nameless, speechless violence that exploded in those first few weeks.

The hardcore of gangs and thugs, a small minority in the city normally, had thrived in the absence of a general populace and the downtown area turned into an arena of aggression and excess. Philip had been caught by a group of skinheads, angry and shouting like animals surrendering to the rage within themselves already. He was beaten badly and left bleeding on the banks of the Avon, barely conscious when someone found him and took him to a field hospital of sorts set up on the Cashmere hills, where they had a view of the city and a clear defensible position. A few days there and he was starting to heal, the kinder souls who themselves could not communicate with each other still looked out for the people struggling with the new way that humanity was operating.

He had in a few short weeks gone from confused to hopeless to uplifted by humankind and despite not being able to understand a word that people were saying to him, whether Babel or one of the Few he could not tell, he saw that everyone was different in the way they reacted. That understanding kept him from losing his mind, and the survivors that made Camp Cashmere (that's what he called it in his head) work were the ones that showed him that there was something worth saving in people.

Pictures and diagrams were key to making things work, paper an pens were premium items and often worth as much as fuel and electricity to survival. He had quickly volunteered to help, signing and using body language to convey how much he could and wanted to do to pay everyone back their kindness. He could drive well enough and had quick reflexes, so he often drove the ambulance that Camp Cashmere had obtained from a ditch, the driver dead and slumped across the steering wheel. They made regular trips to the city, looking for people, stragglers or the infirm to get out and help as much as they could, scavenging for food, supplies and any items that may come in handy. A map of the city served as instructions, Philip had a good working knowledge of the city streets, having driven around them so often day and night as a courier. He knew most of the city well enough to not need names or directions, just lines on the paper with marks where to go. After a while they found a lamination machine and a white board pen, which meant they could mark, erase and reuse maps to plot their patrol of the city.

The hardcore that ruled with inner city with an iron fist, ran out of steam and food within a few short months and either died with their hands at each other's throats or gave up and threw themselves on the mercy of Camp Cashmere, who took them in and helped them under a very watchful eye. Any misbehaviour was slapped down, punished quickly and dealt with severely for the good of the remainder. It made for a calm community to know that things were being handled and dealt with so well, in spite of the difficulty in communication. Philip thought, like many others did without being able to share their belief, that they had learned the hard way from the pulling together after the earthquake that had decimated the city centre years before, had put the city on the back foot and made life so difficult for so long, that battling and working as a disconnected group of citizens without any overarching governance that was in any way helping, was actually a good breeding ground for the skills to cope with the Babel.

While well over half of the city's population fled the city, fearing the worst or heading north to find more support and help, finding less than there was in their home ironically, the half that stayed, avoided the centre and the violence that blew itself out, thrived.

Christchurch turned out to be one of the better places to cope with the demands of misconception and misunderstanding caused by the Babel. They didn't need any of the Few to help them, though they were there and had an advantage in reading and understanding things better than the Babel, the Few were more like public servants who would try and help relay instructions and get things going again.

Philip drove the groups of engineers and volunteers to Lake Manapouri and within a week the power station was operational again, the power back on and some semblance of normality returned to the city and the clean up began. They worked tirelessly and saw that one or two towns were drawing power from the grid, Queenstown and Gore seemed to be taking a drain compared to the other towns but they would have to get to those when they could, they focussed on Christchurch first and then formulated a loose plan, again on maps, to the nearest towns and farms to see what they could do for them.

The national phone lines were not operating and they did not have the expertise, that they could find among the Few they had, to repair or restart whatever was broken. An expedition north had found the view across the channel a burning and bloody mess and no visible way to get across, since Picton township had all but been abandoned. They found a boat and got across the straight in rough weather and what they saw had them turning around and going home again. Wellington had burned, fallen into itself and looked generally dreadful. Ultimately they had enough problems of their own and needed to look after themselves first.

They took what they could and went back south, concentrating on righting their own lives and assuming for at least the short term that the North could look after itself.

Philip was billeted with a family who looked out for him with food and shelter, the daughter who lived there was one of the Few, and she would routinely be called upon to read and translate in some meaningful fashion for the Babel to understand something they needed. Philip drove her places and she made no secret of her crush on him, but she was fifteen and still so very young, with no one to help her understand her journey from teen to adult, Philip was steering clear of any confusion or entanglement. That family had gone out of their way to help him, and the best thing he could think of was to protect and look out for Emily and make sure she stayed the daughter they knew and cared for.

He had been driving Emily back from a job, they had been to the port and she was determinedly trying to help understand the various manuals and safety protocols for docking and unloading the containers with the cranes and other heavy lifting devices. The Babel had a number of port workers who could operate the equipment, but communicating with them deciphering the order and contents of the shipping containers was a mammoth job to get through. They had started just randomly opening containers, but had found hazardous materials in one of them, a worker being burnt badly not knowing how to look out for the danger signs plastered in once helpful, but no longer useful words along the outside. Emily and Philip had been coming here daily for just under two weeks and she had been managed to get a good systematic approach to the sorting and prioritising of containers going.

They were driving home when suddenly, he woke up here in this room.

Something had obviously happened and now he was somewhere else, in an instant. He did not feel like he had blacked out or passed out, he was driving and there was music playing on the car stereo, he didn't know any of the words, but he recognised the music, the name of the song and the artist just beyond his minds reach. He sang along, nonsensical syllables timed to the song he once knew off by heart, but now he sung like a children’s nursery rhyme with no real words. It was amusing to Emily, who laughed at him every time he did this, it was like a game or a joke between them, bonding over music they both enjoyed but only one of the truly understood.

He was singing, then his eyes were closed, the intertia of the moving car was gone and now he was in this dark room, a light on one wall was growing into the shape of a doorway, a rectangle of soft fuzzy light that slowly lit the room until he could see exactly where he was.

Nowhere.

Day 48 - Babel - Chapter 10 (1579 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 10 

He had a car shut away and a stash of petrol to power it, it was in the barn attached to the farmhouse near the road, and it was untouched. Whatever had compelled the Babel to leave it had not been a logical or reasonable force, it was obviously something compelling them not convincing them to act of their own free will. Anne would had taken the car, she would have offered a bunch of other Babel a lift, with sign language or pictures, but she would have driven the distance to Auckland.

He assumed it was Auckland of course, that was the main city, the nearest and the biggest in country, but this was an Alien invasion wasn't it? Alien by definition meant strange and unused to local custom. Perhaps they had picked a spot in the middle of nowhere and sent people there.

The four of them remaining, the Few that represented Fire, Tree, Mountain and Water walked calmly down to the farm house and took some supplies. They had a couple of handguns, foraged for or brought by Babel who had joined with them and contributed what they could. George took the shotgun, it's heft felt comforting thought the thought of unloading it anywhere but into the air terrified him.

They drove in silence, used to not conversing that much with their own people and in each others company not willing to point out how different they really were. It was not long before they caught up with the first few of the Babel walking the road, and it certainly did look like they were headed to the city. They drove past them, as they did not belong to the Community, they must have come from other groups or homesteads in the country and were treading the same path. When they caught up with the first person they recognised they stopped and though Fire had told them that there was nothing that they could do, Mountain and Tree had to figure it out for themselves.

Water waited in the car with Fire.

“George?” She waited while the others were prodding and trying to get through to their Babel before she spoke to the Fire-village leader, nominally the leader of them all.

“Barbara?”

“What do you think they want?” She was genuinely curious, and the wide eyed innocence she felt at being reached out to by an Alien species was replaced now with B-Movie sensibility filled with clichés of Hollywood, and decades or mistrusting aliens. Xenophobia was ingrained in humanity, even when it was fully equalised by disease like this, the strange the unfamiliar was instantly feared and attributed motivation.

“I.” George could not even finish the sentence. He had so little in mind that even saying 'no idea' was too much to bear.

“I want them to come in peace. I do.” Water's tone implied that she hoped one thing, but believed another altogether.

“I know.” They sat in the car, looking everywhere but at each other. Eventually the other two gave up and stood aside and let their friend continue on his programmed path ahead. They sat in the back of the car heavily, knowing that it had been a waste of time, as George had suggested at first but had not argued the point that much.

George started the car up again and they drove on and overtook more and more people as they got further along the road, eventually finding State Highway 1 and heading south to the City. Within a few kilometres driving became very difficult and they had to stop. There were thousands of people now, all walking the road together, not so many to be shoulder to shoulder, but enough that they could not drive safely without potentially running someone over every twenty or thirty metres.

George nosed the car through the crowd carefully, picking his way through them and finding an exit to drive parallel with the highway. It was a painful process of finding roads or tracks to drive along and shadow the main highway, a thickening sea of people, thousands potentially all walking at a consistent pace towards the city.

When they got within visual distance of Auckland a sight awaited them that made them stop and get out of the car to look, just look in amazement. There were two ships, both in the air suspended at either side of Auckland city, one above the Hauraki Gulf, hovering above Rangitoto impressively and the other over Manukau Harbour side, hard to pinpoint exactly compared to the geographic precision of the major landmark island giving it a location. George assumed it to be Onehunga area, maybe Mangere Bridge.

Either way there was a shocking vision two giant flying saucers bookending the country's largest city, marking each end of the narrowest points of Auckland as well. It was too far away to see anything in any great detail and even with binoculars there was too much distance to see any people or actions being taken.

The ships had no death rays or teleport beams visible, they just hung there and still the Babel headed towards them. They could tell there was going to be a problem getting to the city, even from here they had to figure that the Babel coming down the shore would be heading over the bridge, probably up all lanes on both sides, clogging it up and that would make them either walk through them abandoning the car. They would surrender the advantage of speed and velocity at that point.

George looked at the Few from Mountain and Tree and then looked back at the road, a line of people snaking away from them, parallel to the side road criss-crossing the country side.

“We can drop you two in Takapuna, maybe go all the way down to North Head? You should be able to see from there.” He indicated generally. “We'll walk the rest of the way, or try and get through the crowd to see if Greenhithe Bridge is clear.”

“I don't understand. What are we watching for? What good will that do?” Mountain was still staring at the ships, stunned but listening.

“Tree is pregnant. And it's going to be a long walk, a long walk into ...” George didn't finish the sentence, and he did not need to. Tree had to stay out of harms way, Mountain had to protect her. That left George and Barbara, to go the distance and walk into … the trap?

It took them more than an hour to get to where they said they would, Babel were blocking the major roads, and a couple were still in the suburbs heading towards the pack, but finding their way to where they wanted to go was harder than they realised. There was no map in the car and no GPS device. They all knew the way vaguely, by motorway, but that was not an option here.

Finally the four of them stood on the docks at the Devonport ferry terminal looking across the harbour at the massive ship impassively blocking the sky and casting a shadow over the Mountain and sea below it. The windows of the terminal were all smashed and there was no power or any boats nearby to take command of, except the Naval vessels, still in port and looking as immobile and alien as the giant spaceship out to sea. The chances of them being able to start let alone drive a Navy Frigate was next to impossible.

Mountain and Tree were setting up a few chairs on the deck, looking back at the city but with a line of sight to the saucer when a distant popping sound echoed to them across the water.

George turned towards the sound in time to see a ball of fire in the struts of the Auckland Harbour Bridge, and then a second later a repeat of that popping sound, followed by huge chunks of metal breaking away and falling without a splash into the harbour. Delayed a few seconds as the sound travelled afterwards the splash was loud and flat as sections of road fell to slap the surface.

“Oh my god no.” Barbara was standing, staring and her hands clapped over her mouth as she saw that there were a few thousand people on the bridge, like ants at this distance and the dropped like gravel into the water, numerous and indistinctly anonymous. She started to cry as she saw bodies dropping into the water. They were walking off the ragged edge caused by the explosions, the sabotage, and just walked of the edge in the same pace that had got them there in the first place.

George felt the mosquito like buzzing in his ears again, so loud this time he tried to bat it away or shield his head. Noticing as he moved that the other three were suffering a similar reaction. Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

“What the fuck?” Mountain was shaking his head, even from this distance they could see that every single Babel had stopped moving. They lined the edge of the chasm left in the bridge, but they to a man had stopped walking. As far as the eye could see in all directions that they could see Babel lined up a few metres apart and on the main roads, they were just standing. Unmoving

Day 47 - Babel - Chapter 9 (1418 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 9

George was at odds about what to do next. It was not like before, though no one but the Few could say anything it was not the same in the Fire-village as it was prior to the alien ships floating through their night sky. People were leaving the Fire-village and not coming back, with no explanation at all, just gone. He saw one person just get up and leave in the middle of doing something, something they had up until that point been happy doing for the Fire-village. The person, a woman who was nameless, George knew her by sight but she carried no ID with her, just turned up one day bleeding, scared and hungry and joined in with Fire like she had been born there, and happy to be part of the family.

He had noticed already that one or two people had left in the nights in the week after the ships in the sky, but then things had settled and the ships were not seen again. He had been readying himself to go to see the other Few and get a sense of how things had calmed down in the community. There had been a mosquito buzzing about his head, in and out of his ears and annoyingly out of reach whenever he tried to bat it away. It was persistent and high pitched, and driving him to distraction when he saw her, the one who would leave, batting about her head in a similar fashion and he forgot momentarily his own annoyance. Then there was a sudden change in her, like a switch had been thrown and the mosquito, if that's what it was, was gone and her head snapped up like she was looking at the source, someone talking to her or showing her something. There was nothing to see, but she nodded slowly and without any facial expression that betrayed emotion or purpose she stood up and walked away.

George could not hear the insectivorous buzzing any longer and realised that it had stopped when the girl reacted oddly and got up. He followed her out of blind curiosity, running to catch up with her as she was striding determinedly on the path out of Fire-village and to the road. She moved unerringly in a straight line to the roadway and then without missing a step headed up the road, the lane-way that would go out of the back-roads and to the highway eventually and then to where? The nearest town was some way away, and Auckland would have taken then better part of a day, or more to walk to, heading due south, even if she found the main road unblocked it was a hard slog.

George tried to stop her with one arm, but she shrugged it off gently and kept walking. He took more decisive action and stood in front of her hands planted on her chest. She stopped cold and looked down at his hands and then back at him.

He grasped in a half second that his hands were on her breasts, he meant nothing of it but the cold look he got sent a wave of guilt through him and he hurriedly removed his hands apologising profusely, but she looked past and started walking again.

“Look this is insane, I'm not trying to assault you! Where are you going?” It was a futile gesture built out of despair, knowing that she had no way of understanding anything. He caught up with her again and this time grabbed her by the arm, not too hard but hard enough to halt progress.

She reacted the same way as before, looking down at the hand then at him with dispassionate eyes. He let go and she started walking again. It made no difference to her at all, it was a minor distraction, and once it was gone she moved on mechanically.

A theory was forming in George's mind and it scared him somewhat to think it. He caught her a third time, and this time he took a very deliberate action. He stood front of her, took the sleeves of the jumper she was wearing and wrenched it upwards violently, exposing her bra and stomach, the jumper trapping her arms above her head at first, until a second yank pulled it off all together. This time as he was no longer preventing her from moving forwards, she made no move to look at herself, or at him she just walked ahead, semi-naked in her bra and jeans, the same pace as before.

It was George who felt the chill of fear, not the nameless girl he had just assaulted in order to prove his point. He felt, cold sick and weak at the meaning of this. He knelt on the ground and lay his head on the road, feeling the harsh edges of the metal digging into his face, the slight pain a welcome feeling from the numbing and knowing he felt like he was drowned in.

When he finally stood she had disappeared around the corner, he ran at a quick pace to catch her up and stop her, put the jumper back on her, and in a semblance of an apology gave her a hug, one that solved nothing, not even making George feel better.

“I know and I am sorry. I know you can't hear me or understand me, and I don't even know if you are in there anymore, but I am. Sorry.”

Then he stood aside, waving her on unnecessarily and she continued on her way. He watched her go and from where he now stood he could see her for a long while until she became a dot in the distance, occasional dippings out of sight and back again until the light faded. He saw another head at one point, coming in from another side road, and walking near but not with her. The two moved at the same pace. He climbed to a hilltop a half mile away and looked out over the country side. There were not hundreds, but there were a handful of people walking on the back roads, miles apart in some cases, much closer in others.

They were all walking in the same general direction, south towards the city.

He came back to the Fire-village and went straight to bed, Anne noticed that something was very wrong and so unable to talk or do much else she climbed into bed with him and held him until he fell into a deep sleep.

He dreamed of alien ships, wide eyed bug like creatures that flew about buzzing like insects and coming for people, zombie eyed people walking towards their deaths, or their capture or freedom. The unconscious mind had so much to process from that day his dreams were confused and erratic, switching scenario and setting rapidly and without context to the change.

He woke up more tired than when he had gone to sleep, his resting mind worked overtime. The toll of being there for so many people for so long was bigger than he liked to admit and now this unbelievable twilight zone occurrence in his life was a straw, a wafer thin slice of just a little too much before the weight of it all snapped back.

The morning came, the light streamed in and he opened his eyes, gritty and worn out to the dawn light. Anne was not in bed with him, which was not unusual at all, she was an early riser and would often be awake long before him and leave him something to eat, drink or enjoy before greeting the morning light and painting first thing before working her day in the Fire-village.

Today there was no breakfast, no tea or toast waiting for him. George looked about the house they lived in, a wooden frame with thin walls hurriedly and easily constructed like most of the Fire-village, and it felt emptier than usual. He listened out for the usual movements of his neighbours, and heard nothing.

He ran outside and there were three others there, the other Few and no one else.

“Every one is gone.” Tree informed him and spread her hands wide as if to suggest searching her for an answer.

George knew it, felt it coming and once again he felt like the name they had taken on “The Few” was the most apt way that anyone could have described how he felt.  

Day 46 - Babel - Chapter 8 (1570 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 8

Victor was making himself a cup of tea, it was a thing he did to remind himself he was still human, could still function as the world around him was dripping insanity. He had a large cache of UHT milk and a fridge to keep it cold once opened. So twice a day he would light his gas cooker and boil water, manually and brew some tea in a kettle. He had a stash of gas bottles, the BBQ kind that the market below the building had sold. A trip to an inner city petrol station had put him in touch with with an untapped resource of natural gas. The initial scavengers that hit the city, before the buildings began to fall and the fires took hold, went for the oil, the petrol and the supplies. The gas stations had been mostly stripped but the gas containers were intact, the ones not destroyed by other factors. No one knew how to use them, and could not read the instructions or find the manuals. Victor had the ability to read that ninety nine others did not. So he corralled his gas bottles, and took two every day and filled them until he had taken as much as he could. On his missions around the city he found camping stores and took the butane tanks and the empty gas bottles from office buildings that had BBQ's on balcony landings and the like. Over the weeks he amassed over a hundred of them, had fuel that would last him a while, and still the gas station had LPG left in it.

The last run he did, he was chased by a pack of dogs, a new pack not seen before, straying off the beaten path and into the city. They rushed him and he shot two of them dead before the others retreated at the ferocity of the noise, the clap of thunderous death leaping at them. He made his way back to the more familiar territory and saw them following at a distance. He hunted for rats and birds, skinning and changing them to slabs of meat, bait for a trap.

It was only a half day later that he lured them back to the service station where they had first found him and they zeroed in on the offering of the meat, inside the main building. He bolted the doors and trapped them inside that main area, stripped of anything remotely useful a long while ago. It was left with no food, some magazines he would never read and music he would never listen to. Everything else that could be of use, he took or had been emptied in the early days.

As the dogs ate and snarled at each other he laid the basics of the final snap in his cage. From a distance he stood and saw the dogs, now full of their last meal hurling themselves at the glass of the doors, shaking them but in no danger of breaking out. He lit the fuse, a trail of lighter fluid, taken from some other store somewhere, now his own trail of fire. Tracing back into the gas station, finding the pooling gas that was seeping into the air from an opened valve, the safety mechanisms circumvented and the contents leaking into the air.

Even at the distance he had allowed the explosions knocked him off his feet. First there was a bang, louder and harsher than he thought as the gas tank exploded, it was barely a quarter full by his estimations but the thumping wave of pressure it caused blew the windows in and the dogs scattered, bleeding or dying from the shards of glass. The secondary thump of the below ground tanks, filled with fumes and dregs of fuel igniting and in a rush of fuel enriched oxygen injecting into the contained space, was a bomb going off. The rush from the tanks going off threw him metres in the air, deafened him with a ringing noise that took days to dissipate.

The dogs were vaporised, the gas station no longer a shell, empty and ruined. In its place was a crater, a carved out hollow that blew away so many of the surrounding windows, destroyed the forecourt and the road access on both sides, the tarmac and surfacing torn like a backhoe went amok in a semi circle radiated out from the pumps.

He had vowed to be a little more circumspect when making such plans for conflagrations and explosions. The kernel of the idea to seal the city came from this experience, and he was more careful with the larger and more targeted demolitions he planned for the bridges and roads into his city.

A year later the ships arrived, on the tail of the Babel and settled in in the positions above the sea, overlooking the city, the harbours. Victor only saw the one ship, but assumed correctly that there was more than one. This was a small representation of humanity here, there must be thousands more across the planet.

A week passed and nothing happened, they just hung there implacable and imposing in the sky, day or night. By the time that the second week was almost half way through Victor resumed his daily routines, knowing that there was likely nothing he could do to advance the Alien Agenda whatever it might be. In the mean time it was best to just get on with life, his patterns and his rituals.

So he sipped on his tea and had his treat to go with it, he allowed himself two biscuits for each cup he drank. He was staring out the window, eyeing the spaceship, imagining that it was eyeing him back with some modicum of respect when he heard someone call his name.

“Victor.”

He spun around, the sudden interruption to his ritual was like a knife in the dark. The teacup bounced on the carpeted floor, the contents spilling about where he spun in a graceless arc of flying water.

There was no one there. His heart was racing and chest thumping the blood pumping through him madly, maniacally driving a pressure and intensity he could not help but feel. He scanned the room quickly, but he saw nothing. The voice had been loud and clear, not distant or incomplete. He had heard what he though were voices before, they turned out they were anything but voices. The wind, dogs howling, gulls and other animals echoing through the bones of empty city buildings. He had come across a few of the Few, the ones who shouted their threats at him, voices from the early days before people fought themselves out, to a standstill or bravely came to intimidate the deadly assassin in the high towers of Queen Street.

He had defended himself when he needed to, took a low tolerance to other people. On one level he missed some company, he wanted a level of physical intimacy, he was human after all. Though beyond the hate for the bullies and the abusers trying to fight, claw and scrabble over him to what passed for power these days, he had a contempt for any and all people who were unable to rise to the new way of living. He was not giving anything up, not for the chance of sex, power or society. None of those things was as important to him as having his own land, his own city, once a vibrant and lively madness of people and noise, now it was silent and empty, a house bigger than he could ever had imagined. His home filled square miles, had rubble and death lurking, lying in wait but he knew his way around it all. This was his home, he was not giving it up for the lesser humans that tried to edge in to his world, his home. He would not give it up to these ships, whatever they were or whatever they meant was not the issue.

“Victor.”

This time he was looking, and he saw no one but heard the voice clear as a bell. It was like it was inside his head, talking at him from the inside.

“Shit.”

What the fuck was this? Is this madness? Had he been alone too long? Victor sank to his knees, feeling a despair for the first time since before the Babel, back when he was not in control, back when it was beyond him to use what he knew, what he could do to control his world. Now he was the master of his domain, the master of a domain beyond all people except a few very capable individuals. He was alone, by choice and by design. He was alone because there was no one like him and now he was staring at nothing, hearing a voice clearer than the should have in a room empty of anyone but himself.

His knees were wet from the tea soaked into the carpet. That cooling feeling as it soaked the bends of his jeans was the straw he needed to break the back of the fear. He picked up a towel and started to clean up the mess he made.

“I know you can hear me Victor.” He looked up from that moment and saw the ship, it was glowing a new colour, and then he understood.

Day 45 - Babel - Chapter 7 (1399 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 7

Not everyone who survived saw the ships, some small pockets of people, holed up and hunkered down were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those in the South Island mostly missed the show entirely as the ships only appeared out to sea off the coast and could only be seen from the westernmost towns and villages. They had been an area populated in the larger part by senior citizens, retirees and others who already dealt with the initial sickness badly but the dementia like qualities of the Babel with surprising deftness. A generation of elder folk used to fending for themselves in harder conditions, they had their losses and problems without power like so many other areas, but with older houses fitted with wood fires and coal ranges, the harsher life without newer amenities was less of a challenge.

After a couple of raids from the more enterprising individuals used to fighting for position and driving the mountain passes, there were steps taken to isolate Westland district from the rest of the mainland. Well placed trees in the Buller gorge, and a number of slips encouraged in the mountain passes and Westland was cut off quiet quickly and effectively. The trains were not operating, the fuel to run them was gone. The tracks grew over much faster than anyone would have guessed without the daily runs from Christchurch.

They were the only people to see the ships flying in slowly crawling across the horizon out over the Tasman Sea and heading north, one breaking off and angling in, not coming to the mainland, but as the locals could guess from the trajectory, vectoring towards Wellington. Three others heading on the same course.

When the ships hit Wellington they came in on the Ferry path, eclipsing the heads and visible from Picton and the homesteads in the sounds with tiny, hermit family outposts now with solar and generator power being used sparingly and praying for consistent rain for the tanks. It was a surreal sight to see giant flying saucers descending and coming to hover over the Harbour, not the City itself. Those who stayed and were watching only saw that one disc heading for the former capital, which was still there, but mostly populated and the site of some very grim days and violence. The fires had started a few months after the Babel set in and the smoke rose and drifted into the Straight for weeks as the metropolis was ravaged and over a quarter of the city burned. Fire-fighters worked on auto pilot but a number of them died without the direction and concentration of a plan, they just threw themselves bravely at the problem and helped pin it back, but at a significant human cost. The smell and the fear settled in and permeated the City, driving a large contingent of the City dwellers either up the coast to the Kapiti farmlands, or up the valley and beyond to the Wairarapa and more open land. Burned corpses and hollowed out buildings were left behind, no one to clean it up and the terrified inhabitants either fled after the fire or after the next earthquake.

A quake hit a few days after the fire, not a big one by Wellington standards but enough to remind people how tenuous their grip on the earth's crust really was. After the fires had torched the high rises and terraced streets there were some severely fire damaged structures teetering on their last legs, and with a 5.7 Quake, one that the windy city would usually have slept through routinely the worst happened. Most of the buildings that survived the fires, were fine at first but the fire hollowed ones were paper thin in parts, a house of cards waiting that gust of wind. People were still trying to scavenge and raid the office blocks for tools and supplies, a few thousand marked out territory and managed a systematic approach to stripping the city, taking their own turf seriously and leaving others to themselves in an unspoken truce of the desperate.

The quake tore the Terrace apart and like dominoes the buildings fell in on themselves and on the buildings below them. The Botanical Gardens had been a Tsunami of fire only weeks before and all of the places down and around them caught fire with them jumping roads and breaks in lane-ways with the winds that howled their way with the flames. A harsh rainstorm finally put the fires out, just short of Lambton Quay and Willis Street, but everything on the slopes above them were balanced on thin bones of the buildings, once mighty and earthquake proof, now awaiting good shove in any one direction.

The locals felt the quake and new immediately it was bad, not because of the shaking, they could weather that, but the noise that followed. Like waves crashing on the beaches, but a thousand times louder and harsher, the tide of burnt out concrete and steel fell to pressure and time. It took less than ten minutes for the quarter of the city that died in the fires to double their damage in only a few small blocks. The high rises crashed into each other like the scenes from a Hollywood disaster film, anyone close enough to see it in any detail was deafened by the roaring and screeching of the City tearing itself apart. Each after shock, progressively smaller shook the rubble and remnants like a tin can, sieving out the dead, the dying and the impossible survivors screaming at each other unintelligibly and heartbreakingly without real words.

After that the City emptied, whether or not people had transport or anywhere to go, they just fled. The population had been slammed so hard and so devastatingly that it was impossible to stay sane in the charnel house that was once the capital of the country.

By the time the ship arrived and settled in the harbour, just beyond the waterfront edge of the capital, above the water and not the land itself, there were only the valley residents able to see it. Without word of mouth and with no real organisation to spread the word only small number of remaining people came to see this giant thing hanging in the sky above the port. Most of the people in the valley moved further up and in, heaidng to the hills up above the Hutt where there was the river, from which water could be boiled and cleaned up for consumption, and where the land was a little more open, a little less densely packed and the houses could be stripped if they were empty and abandoned, or made into new homes for anyone staying.

The Hutt had always had a reputation for rough edged and violent sub cultures and this was no different after the Babel. Fists spoke louder than reason without words, knives spoke louder than fists and death had the final say. Cars were broken into, and the pass to the farmlands of the Wairarapa was the way out of the madness.

The other ships, three of them carried up the Taranaki coastline and one went central to hover over Taupo, the remainder to Auckland, one on the Manukau Harbour, covering parts of Onehunga, Mangere and the port itslef, and the last one, the largest of all four sat in the Hauraki Gulf and hovered just above Rangitoto Island, watching and hanging impossible and silent in the sky.

Vitcor could see it clearly from his eyrie’s windows on the upper, unobstructed floors. The scattered residents of the city of Auckland, only a fraction of the previous population but not as decimated as the capital saw the two ships paired up and flying in over the Central land areaof the Volcanic Mounts spanning the opposing Harbours. They came in straight and exact, quite high up and then halted for about a fifteen minute period before heading off at a slow ninety degree angle from the trajectory they had entered on. Splitting up and heading away from each other at one hundred and eight degrees. One to the South-west Harbour, the other North-east.

When they stopped finally in position they hovered and did not move again for days. It was just when everyone had stopped looking at them constantly, just checking every now and then, that they made a new move.

Day 44 - Babel - Chapter 6 (1501 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 6

There had been a colony up at the Hospital, the other side of Grafton Bridge. They had not come down to the City, preferring to look for supplies heading to Newmarket and Parnell Rise, where it was more open, there were less high rise buildings and blind alleys caused by fires, falling debris and in some cases falling buildings. At least in the inner suburbs the containment of disaster made for safer scavenging. There were a disproportionate number of speaking people inside the hospital, their procedures for containment of viral outbreaks had been enacted when the first global flu had hit. Around 50 of the staff were isolated to work on the virus and avoid contamination. They had come out by the time Babel had hit but the original sweep had already burned out. Hey had been working with other similar containment units overseas, working back for a trace of the infection, trying to find this sickness that had not killed that many, but had certainly fit the criteria of a global pandemic.

When the Babel infection went to the secondary phase they were spared as they never caught the first phase, and they had access to people unaffected, people affected, the original virus isolated and examined and then the symptoms of the Babel itself as the language centres of peoples brains shut down. Scan after scan, MRI and X Ray and whatever they could do to find the answers they sought.

For all the effort and everything they learned, they achieved nothing. They found and antiviral, they could cure the Babel if you were inoculated before you caught it. The problem was that the language centre was being rewritten in a way, so that the damage was reversible but only if you could crack the code that scrambled it in the first place. You could stop the cause, but not undo the damage without creating more. The first few experiments showed that they could effectively rewrite or unwrite the Babel, but all that did was scramble the language centre anew. It was like Babel had taken all the words and made everyone dyslexic, disgraphic, discalculic and a new word for the complete scrambling of auditory receptors all at the same time.

The Babel was an efficient and irreversible weapon. That’s what they believed, it was a weapon. When networks and power began to fail they soon realised that they were not so much cut off as Humanity was scattered and unable to connect with each other. The fifty or so people took drugs an supplies and broke up, heading out to help where they could. A number of them died in the Mt Eden event, and the rest had been spread far and wide. They had radios, but limited batteries and no power except in a few isolated communities where they had managed with the help of the Few that serviced them, or ruled them, to get limited services. Some of those staff were killed, some found homes and some continued on until they found what they were looking for, somewhere to belong or people to help.

They had still been in the hospital when Victor blew up Grafton Bridge and Symonds Street, that had been the final straw that sent them on their way to get way from the static nature of the barricaded for nature of Auckland Hospital and get out and help people. They could not cure the disease, they could not do any good staying where they were and it would only be a matter of time before someone came for them, either one at a time or by some angry voiceless mob wanting to get in.

The hospital still had uninterrupted power. They and a number of buildings nearby had emergency circuits that would continue in even the most vicious of scenarios, and they could pare back that service inside the compounds of the hospital buildings themselves until stable powered core was formed. Stragglers made it to the parking lots and receptions in the early days and the doctors who could still function did what they could to help what was obviously wrong with the people already there or heading to them for help. Just like many other places, globally the frustration, fear and envy drove a lot of people mad and angry which lead to death, destruction and senseless violence. Doctors who could not read or speak could do little but guess at the drugs and treatments needed and that frightened people who did not know what was going on any more than they did.

From the isolation wards the viral teams saw all this happen and despite begging from some of their ranks, kept the protocols for containment for months, until the outcome was clear and the options were lesser every day. When they emerged there were some survivors who had managed to deal with their new found chaos and carry on where they could, and with patience they worked with the Few who had rejoined society.

The bombing of Grafton Bridge was a wake up call. They felt it keenly reverberating through their whole world, and the tearing of metal and screeching of concrete grinding on tarmac was like a nightmare with an inescapable surround-sound soundtrack. They started on a plan, to strip what they could and convert the wards to hostel like arrangements to house people. But most people had left and only the very sick and very old were left. They were dying in larger numbers every day and the hard calls about what was worth saving were heartbreaking and so commonplace that they took a bitter toll on the men and women for whom “First Do No Harm” was their whole life.

A handful remained to look after the flotsam and jetsam from the inner suburbs who walked ragged and damaged to the hospital, the only safe way in was through Nemarket, but even there the roads needed constant clearing as accidents, explosions and fires still took their toll as the infrastructure of the country fell apart. They saw the signs and the icons left by the mad man with a gun and explosives in the city, and they did their best to keep people away from the downtown obstacle course of death. When on the roof, at the heli-pad where the sat phone had best line of sight reception, they had a good view of the city, they could occassionally see the man, the only thing moving, patrolling tops of buildings, every now and then shooting down and into the ground at another person trying to survive and bracing the no man’s land with a few pictures the only warnings they got.

They knew a little about what was happening in other countries, the satellite phones they had for emergencies were broken out and they contacted a handful of people worldwide who had similar experiences to them. The directory of numbers they could call on the sat phone network was in the high hundreds, but the number of people who answered, or assumably could answer was a paltry percentage. What they heard offered them little in the way of answers or hope.

New Zealand was one of the luckier countries, with not enough people to manage the seriously big cities, the death tolls were horrendous. Not just from the fear and anxiety but also from the massive dams, power stations and nuclear power plants all left alone to their own devices. With no governance, or worse with people who could not read dials and settings properly a series of catastrophic events left some places uninhabitable fire-storms and wastelands, Chernobyl with no one in a position to clean up the mess. That left them with at least a chance to help humanity find it's feet again and rebuild in one of the few places with technology, less risk and the relative isolation of the island nation working in their favour. The tyranny of distance, now a massive benefit and potentially the saviour of the human race.

There were similar stories in Wellington, Hamilton and Dundein, no contact was made with Christchurch at all. A loose network formed, but all they could do was plan on how to help the people they could as best they could. There were simply not enough people left to organise, corral or herd the masses, they had to work on a macro level. This was a virus that was perfect for defeating humanity, divide and conquer was now a symptom of a disease. It was brilliant and evil, and to a man they all believed it was no accident.

The viral doctors were now part of the Few and wandering the country. They had become missionary doctors, performing in third world like conditions on the fly, risking life and limb even to do the simplest of things with a majority of Babel infected adults scared and angry, trapped at a level of communication associated with infants.

When the ships appeared, it all made sense.