Deluge | Book 2 | Phage Read online

  PHAGE

  Deluge Series

  Book 2

  By

  Kevin Partner

  Mike Kraus

  © 2020 Muonic Press Inc

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.

  Thank you!

  DELUGE Book 3

  Available Here

  Chapter 1

  Before

  Bonn Environmental Institute

  Six months before the deluge

  “The answer’s no, Ed.”

  Ed Baxter matched the man’s long strides as he squeaked his way along the polished marble floor. “You gave them my data?”

  “Of course. I even kept my reservations to myself. I presented your theory; they gave due consideration and have elected not to pursue it.”

  “But Dr. Rath, they must see the need to delay the experiment?”

  The man in the dark gray suit halted, grabbed Baxter by the arm and pulled him to one side. “No, zey do not,” he hissed, his normally suppressed German accent slipping out. “And you will drop zis, Baxter, if you wish to retain your position on ze team. To halt now would cost millions and risk political support evaporating. We may never get another chance to act. Do you vant your grandchildren to know that you prevented our best opportunity to halt catastrophic climate change simply because you were too timid?” He made an exasperated gesture, and began to move away again.

  “I have other meetings to attend. I suggest you return to your work. There are many real challenges we must overcome before testing begins, and I suggest you concentrate on those instead of indulging your fantasy.”

  Baxter watched as his superior accelerated along the wide hallway, his heels echoing away. Catastrophic climate change? That was exactly what he was trying to avoid. Why wouldn’t they listen?

  The door of the conference room opened and the steering committee filed out. There she was. Else Lundberg, the white-haired chief of the Science and Petrochemical Industry Environmental Team, also known as SaPIEnT, and the driving force behind the initiative.

  It was now or never. “Professor Lundberg!” Baxter lengthened his stride to catch her as she rounded a corner. She stopped, her face creased in unmistakable annoyance, as a Viking in a black suit inserted himself between them.

  Baxter tried to peer around the man-mountain. “Professor Lundberg, I only wanted a word! My name is Doctor Edwin Baxter, of the exoengineering team.”

  The Viking moved to one side, revealing the taut face of the scientist. “Ah, the scaremonger. What do you have to tell me that Rath did not say on your behalf?”

  “My simulation…”

  “Is likely flawed.”

  “But, shouldn’t we delay? The results could be cata—”

  “Enough!” She raised her hand to silence him. “Do you understand what is at stake here, Doctor?”

  He nodded. “Yes! That’s my point.”

  “No, you have a hypothesis. Set against that is a once-in-a-century opportunity to save the planet. The stars have aligned, Baxter. Science, the global petrochemical industry and the major governments are all in agreement. Do you have any idea how hard it has been to achieve that? My hair hasn’t always been white, you know.”

  He’d heard her use that joke before, but he didn’t laugh this time. “I understand, Professor. But if my initial results pan out, the results could be catastrophic.”

  “Here’s the thing, Baxter. If we miss this chance, then the results will be catastrophic, so we must choose between a possibility and a certainty. Now, I suggest you return to your team, while there is still a place on it for you.”

  She turned to go, then spoke without looking at him. “And do not accost me in public again, or I will ask Helmut to remove you. He is not gentle.”

  Chapter 2

  Twelve days after the deluge

  Buzz Baxter sat up in bed, realized he’d been dreaming again, fell back and banged his head on the wall. A camp bed on the floor of the monitoring room wasn’t the best sleeping environment, it turned out.

  He could hear voices in the room below, most of them in the high register of young girls, interrupted occasionally by Anna’s deeper pitch exhorting them to quiet down.

  Six months ago, he’d tried to stop all this happening. Six months ago, he’d failed. To be fair to himself, he’d confronted both Lundberg and Rath as his simulations and experiments produced more and more evidence of the risk they were taking. All he’d gotten back were threats to terminate his contract and ruin him professionally.

  Right now, lying here in the attic of his refuge in the mountains of Arkansas, he would take professional disgrace for a chance to plead with them again. He’d never wished so desperately that he’d been wrong.

  He drew in a deep breath and swung his legs over the side of the little bed, rubbing the small of his back before getting up with a groan. His clothes were in a pile on one of the office chairs and he wasn’t on the rotation for a shower today, so he pulled them on and checked the sensor board.

  Ironically, it was water that bothered him the most. The farm had a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-liter tower that would be good for around two thousand days. For one person. For the fifteen they now had—even allowing for the fact that most of them were children—he estimated they now had a maximum of two hundred days available, assuming no rainfall. So, their water would run out before their food.

  After a week, they’d barely made a dent in his supplies. But Buzz knew that the flood would not retreat in the short term, if ever, so they had to stretch out what they had as far as possible, which made for plenty of moans from children used to having food on demand.

  He made his way down to the kitchen to find Jo Rosenberg weighing oats into twelve bowls. She was wearing the jogging pants and T-shirt she’d slept in—they were actually Buzz’s—and, as always, it seemed, she was also wearing a smile.

  “
Did the kids wake you again?”

  “No. Bad dreams,” Buzz responded, moving over to the coffee maker, which was softly plurping seductively, drawing him to it. “Thanks for starting the coffee.”

  Her smile broadened. “Oh, I need it as much as anyone, and I’m always up. Would you like some oatmeal? I’ll make ours first, before the horde descends on us.”

  He liked her, he really did. She had a somewhat masculine jaw, but this was compensated for by high cheekbones and bright, blue eyes. She wasn’t as pretty as Anna, but he found her more attractive. She was certainly better company. Anna was too much like him—she constantly worried about resources, safety and the longer term. Jo, it seemed, was content to measure out the oatmeal and take each day as it came.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said as she sat opposite him at the kitchen table. The sun had just risen over the lip of the valley, coming in through the open door that led out to the courtyard and the chicken coops. “I’m sure you’ve considered this, but it seems to me that we need to increase milk production. The more milk we have, the more of the dry stores become edible for the children and the longer they’ll last. We’ve got eggs, but not enough for us all.”

  Buzz dipped his spoon into the hot oatmeal. “You’re right, but to do that we’ll have to find some more cattle, and we’re stuck on a small island.”

  “Have you explored it fully?”

  “No. I was only just getting settled in when Hank and Max turned up.”

  “And then we came along and ruined everything,” she added, only half joking. “I know you were backed into a corner, but thank you for letting us in.” She put her hand out to touch his and he basked in the warmth of her smile.

  For five seconds.

  “Good morning, Vietnam!” Hank ambled in, pulling his braces over his shoulder and dumping a bucket on the threshold. “That’s the pigs fed, now it’s time for me. My, that oatmeal smells good, but I’m in the mood for eggs.”

  “And I reckon Max is, too,” Buzz said, as Jo withdrew her warm hand. It was as if the sun had gone behind a cloud.

  Within minutes, the kitchen smelled so eggy that Buzz was forced outside. He glanced back in through the open door to where Jo was busy with the huge cooking oil can they’d drained and converted into a cauldron. Just as he moved away to pick up the bucket they used for the chicken feed, he glimpsed her turning to follow his movement. He shook his head as she looked away. Among all this chaos, the last thing he needed was emotional entanglement. It had been many years since he’d allowed anyone to get close and it never, ever worked out.

  The chickens, on the other hand, were simple creatures who were easy to please. He measured out the correct amount of feed and scattered it across the pen, enjoying the primeval pleasure of providing for them. At least there was no prospect of their supplies running out, assuming he solved the water problem.

  “Sorry about that.” It was Hank’s voice. He was on his way to deal with the cattle. They had a small milking barn that handled the entire process, but they still needed feeding and cleaning out. “I saw you and Jo too late, so I made a bit of noise. Felt like a skunk at a garden party.”

  Buzz emptied the bucket, making sure all the birds had fed. “It’s okay. I like Jo, but there’s nothing in it.”

  “That reminds me of a joke,” Hank continued, oblivious to the telepathic signals Buzz was transmitting. “Did I ever tell you the story of the ooold empty barn?”

  Sighing, Buzz rolled his eyes, but the message still wasn’t penetrating.

  “I said, did I ever tell you the story of the oooold empty barn?”

  Now, he was putting on a Scottish accent, telling it like a ghost story.

  Buzz gave in. “No. You never told me the story of the old empty barn.”

  Hank paused for a moment, gathered himself as if he was about to embark on a recital, shrugged and said, “There was nothing in it!”

  He hooted as Buzz strode away. “I said, there was nothing in it!”

  “Hank!” Buzz called to his receding back. “Don’t forget—we’re going walkabout in a couple of hours.”

  Hank waved his hand in acknowledgment and disappeared into the cow shed.

  He was a good man, despite his eccentricities. And good men, as the song says, are hard to find.

  Later that day, Buzz looked down from the lip of the valley to where he knew the compound to be. Trees marched down the slope, obscuring the farmhouse from view. It was a good hiding place, but whether it was good enough remained to be seen.

  “Carya tomentosa,” Max said, running his fingers over the bark of the tree they were standing beneath. “Good for lumber.”

  Buzz sighed. It was going to be a long expedition. Max had insisted that if Hank was to leave the compound, so was he. His wound had almost entirely healed now, and he’d opened up a little with Buzz, but not much. The arrival of the children had been like the key turning in a lock and, when he was with them, Max was transformed. But when Anna or Jo tried to engage him in conversation, he locked up even tighter than when Buzz tried it. The prospect of being alone with the women was, it seemed, even more terrifying than exploring an unfamiliar landscape.

  Turning away, Buzz found a path through the trees to the very top, sticking to the white sandstone until he was looking over the other side of the low mountains. Here, the forest was even more dense, but Buzz knew that if they followed the ridge, they’d hit the road eventually.

  “It’s twelve noon,” Max said as they began moving along a dirt track that ran between the trees, passing beside huge outcrops of white rock gnawed with scrubby bushes that tore at them at glacial pace.

  “We’d better stop,” Hank said. “You know what he’s like.”

  Buzz exhaled impatiently. They’d been walking for ninety minutes or so and, though it had been a steep climb, he’d wanted to reach their destination well before it went dark. But Hank was right. It would save time to wait.

  They found a boulder to share. Buzz extracted his lunch—a ham sandwich made with the homemade bread Anna hadn’t quite perfected yet. Hank handed Max his—a chopped egg sandwich. Hank had tried to get him to vary his diet a little more—if only so he could sleep with the window shut—but without success.

  “My dad shot me.”

  Buzz choked on his half-chewed chunk of sandwich, expelling it onto the ground and wiping his face. “What?”

  “He wasn’t really my dad, but they said I had to call him that. But he wasn’t my dad. I never knew my dad.”

  Hank, who’d been stunned into uncharacteristic silence, finally found something to say. “Hey, Max, thanks for telling us.”

  “I can say things up here. I can’t tell secrets at home. That’s the rule.”

  “Why did he shoot you?” Buzz asked.

  “I said I wouldn’t do it anymore.”

  “Do what?”

  “Carry the drugs. He said I was no use to him. He was taking me back, and I said I’d tell them what he’d made me do. He said he’d kill me if I did, so I tried to take his gun. I don’t think he really meant to shoot me.”

  Hank put his arm around Max’s shoulders, but the young man scrunched himself up and leaned away. “Sorry, son,” he said.

  “I’m not your son. I don’t know whose son I am. He died, my foster dad. He told me to get back in the car with him so he could take me to the hospital. But the wave came. I haven’t figured out what happened.”

  “To your foster dad?” Hank asked, having withdrawn his arm.

  “No, I know what happened to him. He drowned. I mean the wave. Where did it come from?”

  Hank shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe a earthquake?”

  “No. There’s not enough water in the world to flood it to this depth.”

  “You reckon aliens brought it here? Or a comet?”

  The laugh died on Buzz’s lips as he realized that Hank was serious. And, besides, the destruction of humanity wasn’t a laughing matter.

  Max shook his head. “Not al
iens. Special relativity rules them out. Not a comet, because the impact would have been detected around the world.”

  “But if there ain’t enough water in the world, then how come we’re flooded? You’re not saying it’s another Noah’s flood?”

  “I can’t rule out supernatural causes, but since they cannot be tested scientifically, I am looking for something rational,” Max said as Buzz watched him open-mouthed, fear swelling. “There is not enough liquid water, but perhaps if the ice sheets melted…”

  Hank finished his sandwich and got to his feet. “Well, we ain’t gonna solve it sitting here. And, in any case, what’s the point in worritin’ about it? We can’t do nothin’. If the Antarctic’s somehow melted all in one go, it’s not as if we can freeze it again, is it?”

  Buzz bit his cheek, spitting blood onto the leaf litter.

  Surely not?

  And hope flared in his heart.

  Chapter 3

  The Albatross

  “‘Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.’”

  Ellie snorted as she leaned on the wheel and stared out at the featureless horizon. “Pretentious, vous?”

  “It just seemed appropriate.” Patrick took a sip from the plastic water bottle and gestured at the ocean.

  “How is she?”

  He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Much the same. Temperature knocking on towards 104, muscle pain, stinking headache.”

  Ellie shifted her numb backside. “She’s young, she’ll fight it off, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah. I don’t understand why I didn’t get it. I was in the water longer than her.”

  “Hold on. The wind’s shifting again. Send Tom up, will you?”