Road to Abaddon Read online

  The old man, picked up his hat, tapped twice on the glass with his cane and mouthed the words “find something”.

  Chapter 3 - The Funeral

  A formation of white jets screamed across the clouds, dipping their wings so close to the top of the city that the crowd covered their ears. A stream of vapour settled like mist.

  “Our loved ones have given their lives so that we may live,” said the woman, a Civic robed in the colours of Metricia – white for the unity of races, and gold, a symbol of the refining fires of the Great Collapse. The Civic held out her arms to mourn the loss of the twenty-four soldiers, diplomats, friends, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters killed in the Sky London massacre. Metrician funerals were not religious and the Civic wasn’t a priest. She didn’t need to invent fantasies about the dead being reunited with a god: the dead were dead; Petreus Salvatore, decorated soldier, honoured leader, man of peace, husband and father, was gone; he was not somewhere on a cloud with a guitar and giant fluffy wings. All that remained were memories.

  And revenge.

  Jonah clenched his fists and let his anger grow. Since he’d returned to Nuevo Madrid he’d been waiting for this moment. Officially, he’d come home to recover from the injuries. Eva was attentive, replacing the bandages on his hands and keeping up with the Mets, the ‘miracle drug’ prescribed to speed up his recovery. Mets normally came in bottles of green liquid that Metrician’s swigged on, as if it was going out of fashion. Jonah figured that Mets was not much better than flavoured water. But the sludge served up in these green vials was the real deal. “Drink it, Jonah. We want you to be strong when they find Petreus. And I know they will. I sense it!”

  But Jonah didn’t want to be comforted. He preferred the facts, like the doctor who looked at his foot, mangled by the flying pizza slice. “A write-off,” the doctor had said casually, as if talking about a wrecked podcar. The doctor called in the bio-engineers, who amputated and replaced it with a mechanical foot – a complex system of wheels and push-rods that joined his leg at the ankle. He didn’t mourn the loss. He didn’t even care about the ongoing pain. If it was covered by skin from a spray-can there’d be no telling it was a machine-foot, but Jonah wore it exposed, to remind himself every day that his father was gone.

  He was in a holding cell, stalking his apartment, waiting for news. He refused to see friends and hung up on the calls from media. His only companion was Eva, and she knew better than to fuss.

  When the news did come, six weeks later, it was almost a relief, as if a key had finally turned in its lock.

  “We’ve found some fragments,” Grandfather Kenrick holo’d from Sky London, one grey afternoon. GK hovered in Jonah’s lounge, his shoulders sunk. He had deep lines beneath his eyes. “I had the fragments all checked just to be sure. I’m sorry but I can confirm that it’s his DNA. Petreus was killed by the terrorists along with two Landers.”

  A silence.

  “Was that all they found?” Jonah finally asked.

  “No, there was clothing, personal effects. I have fragments of his old wrist watch and his army tags. I’ll bring them to you. The Lord President himself has ordered a state funeral on Nuevo Madrid. Petreus will be given full honours as a hero.”

  Jonah listened to the news like a machine. He’d buried hope. He was a realist; no point pretending. He just needed confirmation and the justification to act. In the last week a plan had formed in his mind.

  “Must I attend?” he asked.

  “Attend what?” said GK.

  “Must I attend the funeral?”

  “Why, yes of course. You’re his son!”

  “The best way to honour him would be to find his killers,” Jonah replied, flatly. “I want to leave school and sign up for Terror Squad training immediately. I want to hunt down the killers. I can’t wait for anything, especially not a funeral.”

  Jonah was defiant. He’d rehearsed his speech for days.

  GK sighed.

  “Your father was a great man. He pursued peace with the Landers but all they offered in return was violence. We can’t let terrorists rob us of our mission. We need men like you, Jonah, men of resolve to stand and fight for Metricia. The future of the human race depends upon it.”

  Jonah was taken aback. How often was he told that education was key, exam results blah, blah. Now, it all seemed so irrelevant. Petreus had been massacred within the very walls of Sky London; Metricia was at war again.

  “So yes, I’ll support you,” said GK. “Lord knows, you come from army stock! You’ll make a fine solider. But listen, son. There’s a time to laugh and a time to mourn. Attend the funeral. I want you to, and as your superior commander,

  I order you to.”

  So eight days later, as Jonah stood with his fists at his side, his lips moving to the sound of the anthem, it was not as a son at his father’s funeral, but as a recruit, his uniform pressed and laser polished, mourning the loss of a great Metrician.

  “My friends, my colleagues,” GK’s voiced boomed across the quad and out to a million Metricians watching the funeral around the world. “We honour those who have fallen in the name of peace.

  “A dreadful dawn has broken. Our battles with the Landers may have been won; but it seems the war with those who wish to end humanity continues. Petreus Salvatore was a man of peace, a new kind of leader to take us into a new kind of age – an age of growth and prosperity and peace. But our enemies detest our freedom. So long as the enemies of peace defy us, there remains a task unfinished. There can be no negotiation with those who kill the negotiators. You must decide: if you are not with us, then you are against us. We must fight on.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd and then twenty-four coffins were carried to edge of the city to be dropped into the sea. Shots cracked against the wind. The Civic was reading from a book as the caskets slipped from view. The last coffin, decorated with gold filigree and symbols of Metricia, took the symbolic remains of Petreus Salvatore to the ocean below.

  Later that day, Jonah excused himself from the official wake, and took a taxipod back to the apartment. He knew that upstairs Eva was waiting for him. But he didn’t feel like sympathy. He felt angry.

  Taking the lift down to the garage he rummaged through the piles of family junk, tossing aside old pictures and boxes of clothes until he found a dust cover. Yanking it back, he revealed Fury, the mechanical leopard his father had restored but never found time to ride. Her titanium legs shone in the half-light; the leather seat was smooth.

  Jonah ran his fingers over the metal frame. She was cool to touch. Petreus had spent hours soldering the circuitry and assembling the bionics like a true craftsman.

  Jonah sat astride Fury and pressed start. Her handle-bars pulsed. The garage doors crawled open and Fury leapt into the crowded streets, weaving through the traffic and hitting the down-ramps with reckless speed until they reached the entrance to a causeway that spiked a kilometre out of the city and ended in a grey waste-station with chimneys. Huge waves crashed against the legs of the road, sending sea-spray high into the air. Jonah kicked Fury down a gear and she sprang forwards, powering into the mist and soaking Jonah’s clothes. He skidded to a stop at the waste-station gates and looked down to foaming tide.

  “For Petreus!” he shouted and spat into the Atlantic.

  ◆◆◆

  Tria Baptiste squinted at the mirror and brought the mascara closer to her freckled face.

  “Oh, feng!” she spat, as she turned her eyelashes into a gooey mess. She dabbed furiously and started again but by then a taxipod was buzzing her comms pod.

  “Your taxi’s here,” shouted Tria’s father helpfully.

  “Oh really,” Tria muttered. “Fathers, who’d have ‘em!” she began to say but caught herself. Given recent events, that particular joke was a little inappropriate.

  “Okay, tell him to wait for two minutes,” she shouted, and threw on the dress she’d been making for Jonah’s leaving party. It was done in an antique style: an
off-the-shoulder number with a flared, knee-length skirt pulled tight around her waist. She’d seen it in an old magazine and naughtily tore out the page for pinning on her wall. Marilyn Monroe looks dashing at the Oscars, said the caption beneath a picture of the gorgeous, shapely woman from the 1950s. “The style suits my body shape,” Tria told her friends. They just thought she was weird.

  The taxi buzzed again. “Alright!” she muttered and started again on the mascara. The death of Petreus was tragic and Tria had wept along with everyone at the funeral last week. But to be honest, it was the only real drama that had happened for ages; and the party, well, she hadn’t had an excuse to get dressed up since Catriona’s eighteenth, a lame affair involving a hideous band led by Catriona’s idiot boyfriend, and an embarrassing amount of snogging by the low-rent crowd out the back. Jonah’s departure was poignant, tragic, and let’s face it, very romantic.

  Slipping into a pair of black high-heels, Tria tripped down the hall and presented herself.

  “Papa?”

  The handsome, olive-skinned man turned from his scrip and gazed at his eighteen-year-old daughter. Ginger hair fell in ringlets down to her shoulders and her lips shone red. “Okay, very nice, but where is my daughter?”

  Tria smirked and kissed him on the forehead. “She’s still here, just hiding in the body of hot young thing! I’ll be back late, er, later.”

  “Be careful my love, you’re all I have.”

  “You still have Justinian!” she laughed and stepped outside. Justinian wagged his tail and slobbered on the man’s leg. “Ah, dog, get off. If it wasn’t for Tria …” he said, and moved the mutt aside.

  Justinian was a secret dog. Along with the secret garden with real plants, the collection of old-fashioned DVDs and boxes of twentieth century make-up, the dog was a dangerous indulgence that he let Tria keep. Living plants and animals were frowned upon in Nuevo Madrid, though not officially banned any more (as she was the first to point out). If people must have such things, then they should have the synthetic kind, ones that don’t carry diseases, said the officials. Tria didn’t care much for bureaucrats and their petty rules. If it was up to her, the house would become a menagerie of plants and rescued seabirds.

  The party was already in full swing by the time Tria crossed the security beam, her young face scanned and verified. All Metricians’ faces, irises, DNA and finger prints were stored in a central database and checked in doorways, elevators, vehicles – wherever detection beams could work. Tria couldn’t recall any times that terrorists had been caught in Nuevo Madrid but occasionally someone would be pounced on, immobilised and trundled off for questioning because a beam had failed to read their iris. Mostly it was regarded as an unfortunate joke and the good citizens would be released with an apology and given tickets to the Moroko Resort Club, a leisure theme park on the tip of old Africa.

  “Tria!” squealed some girls inside the heaving club. A group of young women, dressed in tight dresses and small, feathery hats, waved her over. The smoking vases in their hands were drinks – Steaming Screamers – and warned her that her friends had already moved onto Stage Two of a Big Night Out.

  “Here!” screeched one of the girls, handing Tria a tall glass. But she declined, winking and nodding towards the bar where she thought Jonah would be.

  “Ohhh, I geddit!” laughed her friend and returned to the huddle.

  Jonah was in a serious conversation with some square-headed, military jocks when ring-encrusted fingers and purple nails, wrapped around his eyes, “Jonah Salvatore, guess who’s gate-crashing your party?”

  He wheeled around and broke into an embarrassed smile. “Tria, I meant to invite you but…”

  “But what? Feng it, Joe! I’m your oldest friend and you forgot me?”

  “Well, I just didn’t think you’d want to.”

  “What, go to a party?”

  “No, I mean go to a military party.”

  “That’s where you’ve got me wrong, once again Salvatorus,” she said linking arms and dragging him away from the jocks. “Now buy me a drink or I really will embarrass you.”

  Tria Baptiste was not to be crossed, so he ordered bubbles. The conventional kind.

  “You know I have to do this?” he said, as they leaned on the bar.

  “What, get your head shaved and dance around with laser rifles and phosie bombs? That’ll bring him back for sure.”

  Tria’s sarcasm bit deep and he grimaced.

  “Sorry, that was unfair,” she said, touching is arm. “I don’t want you to chuck in your studies and give up your future to the army. And I don’t want you to get shot from behind by some idiot who trips over his own foot.” She glanced at the jocks who now were making explosion shapes with their hands.

  He laughed for the first time in weeks and looked down at his shoes. Why did she always have to question everything?

  “I’ll be sure to lead from the rear,” he said.

  “You do that, and make sure you come back.” She looked at him with brown eyes, her ringlets falling across a bare shoulder. “We’ve got unfinished business, buddy.”

  He was about to say something but a light and music show exploded and the bar erupted with yelling and bouncing bodies. Tria dragged him to the dance floor. He was leaving for feng-knows where, she deserved one last dance.

  Chapter 4 - Nassim Farouq

  Dust from the Libyan desert rose high in the sky, forming a red blanket over the whole of the North African coast. The land burned in an orange light. Even this little Egyptian oasis, set against a hill with narrow caves, was shrouded in haze.

  Nassim Farouq gave the well-winch one last heave and the bucket of fresh water slopped over the side, spilling precious drops onto the stones.

  “Gritz!” she swore.

  Fifty metres away men worked on the old, corroded pump. It lay in pieces. For the millionth time this month she’d been forced to drag up buckets because of that stupid machine.

  “What a piece of a junk!” she said.

  Nassim flopped onto the edge of the well and stared at the scruffy group of brick huts that was her home. Her straight, jet-black hair was hidden under a tattered shawl that fluttered annoyingly in the wind. Ever since she and her younger brother, Wadid, came to her uncle’s farm she was given the rotten jobs. Cleaning, fetching, cooking. She hated it. After her bustling life in Cairo, where the smells of food stalls wafted through the narrow alleys, everything here seemed dull. She lifted her nose and sniffed. Nothing but dust.

  At night she read an old encyclopedia from her uncle’s make-shift library, using a solar-powered torch she’d found in a cave. The torch flickered constantly but it gave her enough light to make her way from A to Z and then back again. She knew a lot about anacondas and taught herself algebra. She read and re-read the chapter on engines and could recite the periodic table up to Zirconium. Fat lot of good it did, though. Books were from another place, another time. Eighteen years old and with a head full of useless facts about the Napoleonic Wars and the history of nanotech, all that Nassim really knew was life in a broken world: criminal bandits, dried locusts for food and dust storms that blew in from the west.

  And, of course, the Contagion.

  Everyone she loved died of it. Her friends from school. Her teacher and his family. The friendly neighbour in their Cairo apartment building. And her parents. Four years ago, now. In quick succession. First her father, who’d been so careful about everything. Everything! The gunshot did it. A stray bullet from a hold-up across the street had planted itself in his left thigh. He should never have gone to the clinic. They could have treated him at home: her mother with a lifetime of nursing experience, and Nassim with her tattered box of pilfered medical supplies. By the time they realised he’d brought home the disease, it was too late, certainly for him and for her mother too. She arranged to send Nassim and Wadid to her brother’s camp in the north-east. But her mother stayed, sealed like an ancient Egyptian in a high-rise tomb. “Be brave, my love, and never l
eave Wadid,” she said, her eyes wet with tears, then she closed the door. On the outside they’d already nailed a notice: ‘Contagion: 24 February, 2139’.

  Everything dies, Nassim thought and she kicked the ground in frustration. She’d been here nearly five years, with no prospect of change.

  She bent low to shoulder the water buckets when an eerie horn echoed across the hillside.

  The alarm!

  Nassim’s heart missed a beat and she stood for a moment. The men at the broken pump threw their tools to the ground and started running towards the encampment, some grabbing their children, others scanning for stragglers caught out in the open.

  “Nassim! Nassim!” shouted her uncle, waving in panic. Nassim dropped her buckets and started to sprint.

  Far behind her, a crack, followed by a fizzing sound made her think of the fireworks she’d once seen during a visit to the old city of Jerusalem. But these fireworks were no celebration. Within seconds the ground around her shook and the group of huts erupted into a ball of flame. More rockets sounded and vapour trails arched their way across the oasis, then exploded sending dust high in the air. The blasts sent Nassim tumbling backwards. Sand and rocks showered down. Her ears were deafened with the noise of the blasts.

  To her left, the rattle of a mounted machine provided some resistance but that was quickly shut down with a single blast.

  Then, just as suddenly, the shooting stopped. Nassim rolled onto her stomach, horrified and alert. Nothing moved except for the flames that licked the encampment and, in the hill beyond, she saw terrified goats scrambling at the high fences.

  Her ears were ringing and she didn’t notice the heavy beat of helicopter blades descending onto the village. It wasn’t until a huge updraft of dust blew over her that Nassim turned her head, shielding her face from the storm, and saw a large oval-shaped balloon lowering itself onto the stones of the valley floor. From each side of the balloon extended gigantic struts that supported blades mounted inside rings that could swivel to allow the contraption to fly. Below the balloon swung a long, open canoe-like structure bristling with rocket launchers and mounted guns – and men. She counted as many as ten, dressed in weird assortments of leather waistcoats and turbans and old-fashioned helmets. Each was armed with more weapons than she’d seen in her life. The balloon was marked with a message from the old world: a giant, yellow smiling face with the words Have a Happy Day.