Beacon Of Light: Episode one (The ultimate post apocalyptic sci-fi thriller serial)

Text © 2013
by Luis Samways

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by The Purple Book Co.

Luis Samways has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

EBook Edition first published in April 2013.

First
Edition published April 2013

For more information on books by Luis Samways Visit:

www.LuisSamways.com

www.Twitter.com/LuisSamways

© 2013 by the Purple Book Co.

One

Present day

‘Okay, the signal is up and running. That’s all of them now. Hopefully Conway will appreciate my efforts,’ the techy guy says to the woman beside him. She gives him an inconsistent stare as if to downplay his role in this particular operation.

‘You did your job, that’s all we asked you to do,’ she says spitefully.

‘That’s beside the point. I’m fed up of all this shit. You can’t surely think that my life can return to normal after this do you?’  He asks.

She smiles as she overlooks the big monitor in front of her. Dotted on the monitors is a schematic of the United States. On the schematic are flashing dots covering all of the states. There are quite a few of them, each one blinking within
its own rhythm. The screen is bouncing with light as she puts her hand behind her head and fiddles with her hair clip. She looks back down at the technician who seems to be waiting for her to respond to his previous question.

‘Who said anything about your life returning to normal?’ She says calmly.

The comment catches the technician off guard. He squints his eyes in confusion.

‘What do mean? Of course my life is going to return to normal. It’s all done now. Every beacon is active. It’s taken me long enough. I have a life to get back to,’ he explains as he starts exiting the current computer application he is on.

‘You have no life now. You’re just a number, just like the beacons out there. You have given your life to this government, for that we are grateful. Anything but your life is not acceptable. You can’t go back to the life you once knew. I thought we made that clear when we hired you. We pay big money for a reason you know,’ the woman says as she continues to fondle with her hair clip, one hand remaining at her side as she does so.

‘Big money?
How the hell am I supposed to spend any of it if you won’t let me leave? For all I know you guys are just stringing me along. I haven’t seen a single payslip yet.’

‘You don’t need to see anything number nine,’ she says.

The man’s face grows red with anger.

‘I fucking told you guys to not call me number nine. My name is…’

Before the man can finish what he was about to say the woman pulls a sharp pointed spear like object from her bunched up hair. She swings the pointed object down and lands it firmly in the cranium of the man. He starts to convulse as he sits on his chair. The signs of life rush out of him as he catches onto one last breath. She pulls the sharp object out of his skull and throws it on the floor. She reaches into her smart office jacket and pulls out her cell phone. She dials some numbers and brings the phone to her ear.

‘I’m going to need another technician….Number nine was terminated….Lets just call it a slight glitch,’ she says coldly

Two

Ray was doing his usual Monday morning routine. Check his emails, look at the world news and run his postal business from home. The online ordering business is a strange business to be in. It always made him laugh at some of the things people send others. His business was a gifting website so to speak. People would log onto his website and randomly gift things to random people. It worked on a registration system that matched certain people up and recommended them as being compatible with the other. It was his new take on online dating. It had worked seeing that he makes a rather neat living off it. He’s not rich by any stretch of the imagination. A lot of the money he makes goes into the infrastructure of his website. Sure, he’s had plenty of big money offers from companies who want to buy his unique brand, but he’s sure of where his routes lie and they lie with the users. He wants it to be a homely place for lonely people to make friends. Even if that means getting by while having his apartment filled to the brim with servers.

He’s staring at his computer screen and digesting the world’s events. He usually does this with a cup of coffee in his hands but today he has opted for a Red Bull. He knows the stuff isn’t too good for you, but he just can’t bring himself to get up from his chair and miss out on any breaking news. He sits there for a while, still trying to grasp what is going on. It confuses him slightly. Could he be mistaking what he is reading?

He has been following the case of a computer technician who went missing ten years ago. The man’s wife insists that her husband had been kidnapped but officers insist that the suicide note that he had left behind before blowing his head off was proof enough that the man was dead. The thing is, when the wife ID’d the body at the morgue she was adamant it was not him, so much so she demanded a DNA test. The cops were sceptical of her because the sad truth is; she has a history of mental problems. The woman suffers from Bipolar and a mild case of schizophrenia, if there was ever such a thing as a mild case of s
chizophrenia that is.

The head of the man was obviously beyond recognition. A shotgun blast from close range will do that to a human head. But the one thing that makes the woman certain that her husband was not the one lying on the table in front of her was the fact that his skin complexion was off. She remembered that he had three moles on his chest; the corpse at the morgue had no moles. To make things worse, the man’s DNA profile magically disappeared. It’s been a low brow case since. Not much media exposure what so ever. If it isn’t drug or gang related, the media doesn’t want to know.

But today of all days, Ray found himself staring at the screen in dismay. After ten years of searching, the woman had found her husband’s body. It was dumped on her front lawn that very morning. His face was still intact, no shotgun blast to the head. Her husband was dead, but not from the suicide he apparently committed ten years prior. Where was her husband for the past ten years? Why was his body dumped on her lawn today of all days? These were the questions that the news wanted answering. These were the questions Ray found himself asking.

Three

New York’s Sewers

The alarmed mysterious man looks down at his arm. He can see the blinking light pulsate in his wrist, much like a sniper’s laser dot. He isn’t being scoped at though; the light he’s seeing is a light that’s been blinking in his wrist under his skin for the past two hours. It’s been gnawing at him.
Distracting him from his daily routine. What’s a man supposed to do when he sees a blinking light in his wrist? Does he tell people? Does he run? He’s done the latter because he did not need to tell anyone. Not one soul needed to know. Not a living soul anyway.

A few hours prior
he had found himself at a rather large dinner party. He just signed the deal of a lifetime. The lawyer’s firm he works for was rather pleased with his progress. The Japanese clients he was wining and dining were impressed with his pitch. They signed on earlier that day and that evening was supposed to be a celebration. It turned out to be the start of something he had no control over. It was something no one had any control over.

He was sitting there an hour into his meal when something caught his eye. One of his fellow colleagues was twitching about in his seat. He was sweating profusely. The man didn’t know what was wrong, but soon found himself in the same fearsome state. He clocked his fellow worker’s eyes drift from his dinner down to his wrist. A bright red beam had seemed to illuminate itself through the man’s skin. Suddenly the frightened co-worker had bounced off his seat and up to his feet, waving his bright red arm around as if it were on fire.

‘My arm, my goddamn arm! There’s something wrong, call an ambulance!’ The man had screamed.

The top flight lawyer found himself in shock at what was happening to his co-worker. In fact, so did the gentleman that they were entertaining. A tirade of English and Japanese fear was heard at the table as a few men cleared the table and stepped back, cell phones in hand ready to call the ambulance.

‘Hold on, I’ll get help,’ the well-dressed lawyer said to his reeling work buddy.

He had stepped away from the table where he saw the flailing man panic. The blinking red light in the man’s arm had engulfed the room in a light that was now noticeable from all angles of the room. It was as if the skin on the man’s arm was melting away and with it shards of light were penetrating through the now torn arm with flashes or reds and yellows.

The lawyer’s heart was pounding a mile a minute as he decided to heed his words as he ran from the table to try and get some help. He ran through the dining area where countless patrons of the restaurant were scrambling for the exits.

‘Someone get me a doctor, we need a doctor, my friend’s arm….someone please help us,’ the successful lawyer screamed as he shook at random people for help.

No one was stopping as they all bolted for the exits in panic. The lawyer had found himself in fear as he looked around the half empty restaurant. Not one person was prepared to help him and his friend. He turned around to see his friend scream as his arm seemed to disappear in a frenzy of red lights. Even the Japanese people that had come with them to the restaurant had vanished. He looked on in amazement as his friends eyes had locked onto his with one last plea. All the lawyer could muster was a mimed “sorry” as his friend screamed one last time. The room went a bright red as a shower of lights burst through the co-worker. It seemed to escape through every pour in the man’s body. For a few seconds there was nothing but light and then the lights vanished as the man’s body exploded into a mist of red and black.

The lawyer looked on in amazement. In shock, he moved closer to inspect the remains of his co-worker, and then suddenly he looked down at his wrist. The blinking lights had started once more, just like they started blinking on the wrist of his now dead co-worker. That’s why the lawyer is in the sewers right now. Maybe they can’t find him down here. Just maybe he can escape. Whatever happens, he knows that the blinking lights in his wrist had stopped flashing so violently once he made his way underground. Maybe he has enough time to figure this out.
Just maybe.

Four

‘So the guy’s dead?’ the man asks the well-dressed woman in his new age styled office.

Fish tanks surround the office in replacement of walls. Sharks and other sea creatures lurk around in the waters as the bright artificial lights bounce the blues and whites of the tanks onto the office floor. The woman catches herself looking at the mirage of lights dancing on the floor. The man behind the desk clears his throat much like a teacher does when they suspect a student isn’t paying attention.

‘I’m sorry Mr Conway. It won’t happen again. As I said on the phone, it’s just a slight glitch,’ the pretty woman says as she still remains fixated on the floor, looking at it as if looking her boss in the eyes would be dangerous at this very moment in time.