Apocalypse Machine (23 page)

Graham tenses, which generally predates something horrible.

A moment later, a ladder is lifted up and slid down to the ground. No words are exchanged. They simply wait.

Despite my fear, I’m the first to move.

Grumbling a string of curses under his breath, Graham follows. At the top of the ladder, two soldiers help me over the wall and onto a metal catwalk on the far side. I thank each of them, thrilled to be alive and in friendly-ish territory.

Graham arrives a moment later, helped by two other soldiers. But he’s not relieved. He’s anxious. He looks me in the eyes and says, “Just so you know, this next part is going to suck.”

Before I can reply, a black hood is thrown over my head, and I’m clubbed by something solid. Consciousness fades, as I fall. It’s mercifully gone by the time I hit the hard metal catwalk.

25

In the hours following our abduction, I learn how to avoid being tortured: tell them everything.

Like Chunk in the clutches of the Fratellis, I hold nothing back. My past. My job. I direct them to websites where they can find articles written by me, and my bio. I tell them about Iceland. About my time at the White House. About our mission and every detail about what we found and how we ended up outside Israel’s border. For the first few minutes, I’m pretty sure they are going to water board me anyway. They have the towel and bucket ready. The concrete room I’m kept in has a drain. Layers of brown stains cover the floor. The faint smell of past horrors lingers in the air.

I’m pretty sure my interrogator, who is wearing a black mask that reveals only his cold blue eyes, thinks my story is a smoke screen. I can’t say I blame him. I find it hard to believe, as I retell it. But he lets me say my piece, listening to every word without comment, staring me down the whole time.

When I finish, his eyes narrow, but he still says nothing.

“Sir, I’m telling the truth. I have no reason to lie. The Machine—the monster—threatens the whole world.”

“The threat of annihilation is nothing new to Israel,” he says, breaking his long silence. “And we face it still, from your Machine, and from the enemies who surround us still. But now, our ally,
your
country, has abandoned us to our enemies.”

While I doubt the decision to call back U.S. forces worldwide had everything to do with me, I
did
advise the President to take that kind of action, to prepare for a mass southern migration and a possible war with Central America. So it’s hard to hide my blossoming guilt. And I’m pretty sure he can see it.

He leans forward, menace in his eyes. “You will tell me everything.”

I’m about to insist that I have, aside from my advice to the President, when the metal door behind him opens.

The first sign that things are turning around for me is that the woman who enters isn’t wearing a mask. The second sign is that she gives me a smile. It’s the kind a receptionist at an emergency room might offer—welcome mixed with pity. Her large brown eyes look kind, her curly hair barely held back by an elastic band. She looks almost Muppet-like, compared to the black clad terror seated across from me.

She steps up next to my interrogator and hands him a tablet. He takes it without a word, looking at what’s on the screen. He then swipes several times, his eyes scanning with military efficiency. Then he hands the device back and pulls off his mask, revealing a kind looking face that hasn’t been shaved in a few days. And he’s actually smiling. “Your identity checks out, Mr. Wright. We can’t confirm the rest of your story, obviously, but your friend, who has remained undaunted by the threat of torture, is clearly U.S. Military.”

“An Army Ranger,” I offer.

The man grins. “You’ve said that, yes.”

The woman walks around behind me and unlocks the handcuffs holding me to the metal chair, one-by-one. When I’m freed, I lean forward, stretching my spine. The chair’s back is angled just over 90 degrees, making it incredibly uncomfortable, which I suspect is the point. I put a hand to the back of my head. There’s a bandage where I was clubbed, but the swollen lump still makes me wince when my fingers graze it.

“Have you considered that he might not be pleased that you’ve spoken to us so candidly?” the woman asks, and then she drops three maroon pills into my hand. “For the pain.”

I put all three in my mouth and swallow them dry, like a bona-fide action hero. “I’m only considering the fate of our world. I don’t care about politics or rivalries or ancient squabbles. There isn’t going to be a human race left, if we don’t put all of that behind us.”

The woman stops in front of me, still smiling. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

“You are?” I say.

“I agree with you.”

“So I didn’t just take cyanide pills,” I say, mostly joking.

“Ibuprofen.” She offers her hand, and I shake it. “I am Agent Aliza Mayer.” She motions to the man sitting across from me. He doesn’t offer his hand, but looks far less threatening than he did a few minutes ago. “This is Agent Yehoshua Zingel.” She heads for the door, and Agent Zingel motions for me to follow her.

We leave the interrogation room and enter a stark white hallway that’s just twenty feet long and has only two exits—one that opens to another featureless hallway, and a second at the far end, where a closed metal door awaits.

“Where are we?” I ask, and then I pose a follow-up question. “What agency do you work for?”

She pauses at the far end, hands on the door’s push bar. She gives me a grin, shoves the door open and says, “Welcome to Mossad.”

The vast room on the far side of the door, filled with large view-screens, an array of high tech computer consoles and a beehive of activity from people in lab coats, suits and combat armor, catches me off guard. The massive digital maps and countless video feeds displaying different parts of the world, from ground level, and from high above, put the White House’s situation room to shame—as does the newness of this place. Everything is bright, shiny and new, like the bridge of some kind of starship. But the surprise I feel at the room’s futuristic feel and activity level pale in comparison to the revelation that my host is Mossad.

The secretive intelligence agency is Israel’s version of the CIA. They’re well known for being the most ruthless, dangerous and efficient intelligence agency in the world, performing covert and counterterrorism operations in some of the most hostile locations on Earth. They’re also one of the most high-tech agencies on the planet, employing a dedicated team of scientists covering just about every discipline imaginable, including creating future-tech combat and defense weaponry. They’re not a broad military force, but for surgical strikes and covert operations, there is no one better. And I’m pretty sure that even Graham would agree. This also means that the interrogation room wasn’t a prop meant to scare me, and those stains on the floor were very likely real.

Standing at the back of the room, just a few feet away, is Graham. Like me, the back of his head is bandaged, but as I walk to his side, I see his face took a beating as well. He sees me and offers a head nod.

“They work you over?” I ask, looking at his bruised face.

“Until they showed me a video of you spilling your guts,” he says.

“Better figurative than literal, I always say. Well, I’ve never said it before, but I stand by it.”

He grins, and then winces. “You’d make a horrible Ranger.”

“That’s why I’m a journalist. You don’t seem that angry about me spilling my figurative guts.”

“I was, at first.” He shrugs. “Then I decided you were right. This is bigger than any one nation. The Machine doesn’t recognize borders. We shouldn’t either.”

When Agent Mayer steps up beside me, eyes on the large, movie theater-sized screen at the center of the far wall, I ask, “Do you know where it is?”

She turns to me slowly, eyebrows furrowed. “How long have you been out of communication with your superiors?”

“Since we touched down,” I say. “Almost two weeks.”

“A lot has changed,” she says. “The…you called it ‘the Machine.’ The Apocalypse Machine.”

I nod.

“It out-paced the ash cloud after destroying Moscow and made its way across Siberia.” Mayer pulls a small device from her suit-coat pocket, pointing it at the large screen currently covered in an array of frames, each displaying different information and images. A cursor slides across the screen, grabs one of the frames and drags it to the center, following the motion of the device in her hand. The frame expands, taking up a large portion of the vast screen. A video starts playing.

It’s a security camera pointing down an empty street, lined by business buildings, their signs all in Russian. And in the distance…the Machine. Its legs are still below the horizon, concealed by buildings and terrain, but the top half of its immense body can be seen clearly stalking straight toward the camera, and the city in which it’s mounted.

It’s a horrifying view. Despite the image being black and white, it’s still easy to see the luminosity seeping through the Machine’s shell and glowing from the coils of giant tubes collected at its underside. There are also several long spines jutting out from the bottom of its…neck, for lack of a better word. The towering spines on its back, doubling its height, sway back and forth with each step. All of this is horrible, but nothing compared to seeing the Machine’s head for the first time. It’s really just an extension of its shelled body, but its large black eyes, framed by glowing light, reveal something far worse than the menace I expected to see: indifference. It’s strolling across the countryside, decimating civilization, and it’s not even noticing. Comparing the Machine to a human stepping on ants isn’t even appropriate. We’re even less significant to it than ants are to us. We’re more like the tiniest of insects that people step on all the time without even noticing. A shiver quakes through my body.

“You okay?” Mayer asks.

“Hadn’t seen it head-on yet,” I say.

“It is…unnerving,” she says, and then continues. “It didn’t cause much direct damage in that part of the world, aside from the earthquakes generated by its passing, but the radioactive ash settling to the ground decimated the population that hadn’t evacuated. In response to the crisis, the Russian military, in cooperation with the former southern Soviet states, pushed south into the Middle East, making way for millions of refugees. This is the primary reason Israel’s enemies have yet to attack. Russia had less luck moving into China, and the two countries are now effectively at war.

“The Machine then crossed the Pacific Ocean, creating a tsunami that decimated the western coast of Alaska, and nearly wiped Hawaii off the map. It moved across northern Canada, through mostly uninhabited lands, where the combined Canadian and U.S. militaries tried a brute force attack even more powerful than the Russian assault you witnessed. While the resulting loss of human life was minimal, the assault dumped more radiation into the northern hemisphere and proved equally ineffective.”

Between the image of the approaching Machine being displayed, and Mayer’s tale of woe, I’m beginning to feel sick. But there is a glimmer of hope. She hasn’t said anything about the contiguous 48 U.S. states, which means my family might still be safe.

I’m about to ask about Washington, D.C. when the Apocalypse Machine’s lumbering walk becomes a flurry of action. The large plates on its back quiver. “What’s happening?”

Mayer turns her attention back to the video. “We’re not sure.”

Fluid leaks from several of the Machine’s dangling tube-like appendages, spraying back and forth, as each step sends them swaying. They look like giant leaky hoses, the liquid occasionally bursting out from escaping air bubbles. Mounds of material slide away from the sides of the Machine’s back, propelled by the vibrating plates.

“Oh, no,” I say. “I know what it’s doing.”

Mayer looks at me, but doesn’t say a word. She’s waiting for me to continue, and she looks ready to beat the words out of me if I don’t start talking.

“Have you gone through my pack?” I ask. “Did you find a sample container?”

“Holy shit,” Graham whispers. He’s just figured it out, too.

“We did. Both. The sample is in a biohazard containment unit. What is it?”

“I haven’t confirmed this yet, and—”

Mayer grips my hand in hers, hitting a pressure point that numbs my arm from wrist to elbow. “
What
is it?”

“Eggs,” I say. “It’s shedding eggs like a fiddler crab.”

She releases my hand. “It’s
multiplying?
”

“Maybe,” I say. “Though I doubt our planet could sustain more than a few of them.”