Cull

By Jonathan Nash

The human species is on the brink of catastrophe. A population of 7 billion is polluting the atmosphere and draining the Earth of its resources, destroying the planet that sustains it. Politicians seem unable to deal with the crisis but there are powerful people, led by aristocratic Englishman Jonathan Hewitt, with a plan. It is simple and terrifying - a cull of the human species.
Within the guarded confines of the SekMet Pharmaceutials' laboratory, work continues on creating the weapon that can fulfil the conspirators' hopes. That weapon is Smallpox which, though seemingly wiped from the planet decades earlier, is now awakened, enhanced and ready for release.
However, though secrecy is vital and strictly enforced by a 'containment team' of ruthless ex-special forces soldiers, information regarding the conspiracy falls into the hands of two small-town journalists - the crusty and jaded Barnaby Thorne and the younger, much lovelier and tech-savvy Rachel Johnson.
Slowly, Barnaby and Rachel realise the appalling magnitude of their discovery and that they are chasing the biggest and most dangerous story of their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Nash
• Release date: Dec 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311802026

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The man breathed heavily, removed his baseball cap and ran his hand over his head to wipe the sweat from his clean-shaven scalp.

He had been working for hours in the heat of a cloudless summer day and he was perspiring heavily, his dark blue T-shirt turned black from the sweat that had soaked into the fabric across his shoulders and back.

At 50-years-old he looked remarkably fit. There was not an ounce of fat on his lean and muscular frame and his movements were free of the strain and aches that could bedevil those whose trade was manual labour.

His face, though, betrayed his age - made him look older than his five decades. Deeply tanned, the sun had worked its magic not only on the colour of his skin but on its texture too - wrinkles and lines spread from the corners of his eyes and mouth, marking the passing of days spent under a blazing sky.

He leaned on the long-handled shovel that he had been using for the best part of the morning and looked down upon his handiwork. The gravesite was nearly finished, the mound of freshly dug earth all but covered by the heavy rocks he had arranged carefully upon it.

He looked around at the spot he had chosen and smiled grimly. It was perfect.

This area of the park had been one of their favourite spots in the city and he had toiled hard, using whatever machinery he could salvage, to keep the small area, the size of two tennis courts, clear of the tall grass that had long since reclaimed the rest of the park.

In days past, days that now seemed more like a dream than any concrete memory, they had come here every day to briefly escape the tedium of their office-bound jobs - to eat lunch, to talk of things past and future, to revel in and admire the views this place accorded of one of mankind’s great cities. And, though they had shared the area with hundreds of others, this spot had become theirs and theirs alone.

Many important moments in their lives had happened here. It was where they had first talked about love and marriage, where they had talked of children and of how many they would have, where they had received the message from an excitable real estate agent that the offer on their first home had been accepted and where, on one warm summer evening, they had risked eternal embarrassment being caught making love.

He looked south, past the rusting sign that read ‘Royal Botanic Gardens’, past the now discoloured gates that marked the park entrance and on to the view that had once captivated so many. The Opera House was still as breathtaking as it had always been - the wear and tear of neglect upon its white sails invisible from where he stood.

He turned slightly to gaze at the harbour bridge, the magnificent structure that still spanned the glistening waters of the bay, and finally he turned to look upon the towering skyscrapers that marked the heart of the city and which still reached elegantly for the clouds - silent monuments to man’s ingenuity.

Yes, he thought, this was the perfect place.

His face turned hard once more as his thoughts returned to the reason he had come back here and he discarded the shovel and picked up a white, wooden cross that lay at his feet.

It was a crudely constructed affair - two unequal-sized lengths of wood nailed together - and he ran his dirt-covered, blistered fingers over the words carved upon the cross - words which, like the cross itself, were rough, carved by a hand untutored in such a skill.

He thrust the cross into the earth at the head of the grave and slumped to the ground, leaning against the stones, and took a bottle of water from the backpack at his feet, pouring the contents over his head and face, drinking greedily of what was left.

Wiping away the excess water he retrieved a small, dog-eared, leather-bound book from the bag and flicked through the yellowing pages.

He began to read aloud, his voice wavering as he spoke - the clear, deep tone tinged with sadness.

‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’

He coughed, clearing his throat of the welling of emotion that had begun to collect there.

‘I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself.

‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.’

He closed the book, his head bowed, his shoulders slumped, and he traced his fingers once more across the words carved into the cross.

‘Samantha Harris. Aged 48. Wife, lover, friend.’

A cooling breeze blew across the park and he closed his eyes and forced himself to relax as it brushed over him.

He would cast his mind back once more to happier times, he thought, to times before now, before his wife’s death, before the great catastrophe . . .

His thoughts were broken by the low growls of a pack of dogs that, to this point, had been lying quietly in the shade provided by a small tree.

There were four of them and they were his dogs, his family really, and they were huge animals. More than a metre tall at the shoulder they each weighed more than 60kg and were extraordinarily broad and heavy-set, their muscles rippling under short, tan-coloured fur.

They were superb beasts and had proven to be invaluable - a long-term investment in protection. Eternally loyal and ferocious they had been trained to warn him of impending danger and to scare off potential threats - a job they had excelled at.

He watched them carefully as they rose and stalked their way towards the long grass that bordered the area he had reclaimed.

The fur on their necks was bristling, their muscles tense. Spittle dripped from their lips as their drooping cheeks curled into snarls.

They stopped a few metres short of the long grass and their growls grew louder as they restlessly pawed the ground.

This wasn’t good. He had never seen them like this before.

Perhaps the breath of wind that had passed over him earlier had dragged a scent with it, a scent too faint for his senses but one the dogs recognised carried with it a whiff of danger.

Whatever it had been the man knew better than to ignore their instincts and he rose slowly, slung the backpack over his shoulder and grabbed a shotgun he had left leaning against the tree under which the dogs had been sheltering.

He began to back away towards the park entrance, keeping his eyes fixed on the dogs, the shotgun pointed in their direction.

He had spent too much time here - had let emotion override the cautious nature, cultivated over many years, which had kept him and Samantha alive for so long.

They had known for years that these parks were no longer places of ease and relaxation, not for humans anyway.

Hopelessly overgrown, Mother Nature had long since reclaimed the once meticulously maintained grounds and they had become the hiding place and hunting grounds for many animals, including those that had escaped from the once world-renowned zoo across the bay. They were dangerous and no longer kept their distance - their instincts no longer screaming ‘caution’ at the sight and smell of humans.

The man knew better than to turn and run and he cursed under his breath.

He had ventured in for the first time in months only to carry out his sad task.

He grimaced.

How stupid.

He shouldn’t have come. He should have buried Samantha somewhere else. She was a pragmatist. She wouldn’t have cared and she wouldn’t have wanted him to put himself in danger. They had been so careful in the previous years he knew she would have despaired at his foolishness.

He was close to the exit now. Just a few more metres to the relative safety of the concrete world of skyscrapers that was his hiding place, his hunting ground. If he turned and ran he would be on the steps that led down to the Opera House in seconds.

Suddenly, the dogs bounded forward towards the long grass. They were barking furiously; their loud, deep rumbles filling the air as they jumped excitedly along the edge of the clearing.

The man squinted as he tried to see what the dogs had sensed. It took him a few moments but then he saw something - a section of the long grass that seemed to bend against the wind, to break like a rogue wave against the push of the swaying sea of green. Something, something big, was moving there and it was nearly upon them, nearly at the edge of the covering grass.

The man froze in a kneeling position - the butt of his shotgun jammed tightly into his shoulder, his gaze squarely set down the barrel to the where his dogs paced restlessly, waiting for the animal to reveal itself.

And then he remembered something - something from an age long gone - and the cold chill of fear and dismay darted up his spine and his blood froze.

And he didn’t need to turn to know the attack was coming, didn’t need to turn to know that the dogs were being distracted from the real danger that was unseen, didn’t need to turn and see it to know that he had been duped and ambushed like a startled deer.

And things seemed to happen in slow motion for him then, as death seemed to sneak up on him.

He knew it wasn’t slow motion of course - it was just his mind playing tricks for, though the movements of his body seemed achingly slow, his brain presented him with speed of thought and clarity of perception that amazed him.

Suddenly, every small detail of his world became apparent to him - birds flying across the blue sky above him, insects flitting across stalks of grass, the glare of the sun shining off the thousands of skyscraper windows in the distance.

And in those few bizarrely long seconds, odd thoughts crept into his mind and he marvelled at what strange animals humans were that such thoughts should come to the fore at such times.

For he wondered whether, if he were to be killed, this might not be better than a life without Samantha; whether this death might not be less painful than the long and lonely march towards the afterlife that he had presumed was to be his fate.

And the thought comforted him as he turned to meet his fate.

Perhaps this was for the best, he thought.

Perhaps.

CHAPTER 2

Dressed from head to foot in black and crouching low in the deep shadow at the edge of the forest, David Mingus looked like a Special Forces trooper waiting patiently for a signal to attack.

He'd been hiding in the dark for more than two hours, much longer than required but he was nothing if not thorough. He liked to be fully prepared and over the years he’d found getting to a job early allowed him to go over every little detail of a plan while scoping out his target for any potential problems.

And there were always problems. He had yet to take part in even the most minor of jobs without something going awry.

And, so far, this one had turned out no different.

Although he could have lived without the bitter cold of the winter night that enveloped him, the weather forecast had been most definitive that the moon would be completely hidden by thick cloud cover. Which would have been perfect, had it been true.

But alas it was not so and the clouds had broken up allowing moonbeams to shine through the gaping holes between them like searchlights during a jailhouse breakout.

That extra time he had given himself had proved useful once again and he had spent it studying the layout of the open ground between him and his target, making a note of the dips and bumps in the ground, places where he might find cover from the moonlight when he made his run.

He checked his watch. It was 2.20am. Ten minutes to go.

He tightened the straps of the backpack that hung around his shoulders, adjusted the balaclava that covered his face and checked for the umpteenth time that the laces on his rugged army boots were tied nice and tight – the last thing he needed was for a loose shoelace to bring his plan, and himself, crashing to the ground.

He shuffled position once more, lying flat on the cold, hard ground and scanned the area ahead of him for a final time through small, military-style binoculars.

50 metres of open, undulating ground lay before him that led to a wire fence some 3 metres tall. Beyond that lay another 50metres or so of dark and empty car park before his target – one of several enormous, white-clad, two-storey buildings.

He scanned the wire fence. At first glance there was nothing extraordinary about it. Sure, there was a mass of razor wire that curled ominously along its top, the moonlight glinting off the sharp points of cold, stainless steel, but that was par for the course these days.

Of much more interest was the small sign that hung halfway down one section.

‘BEWARE. ELECTRIFIED FENCE’ it stated in bold red letters.

He tucked the binoculars away.

He had waited, watched and studied for long enough and time was nearly up. The exciting part of his business was about to come and he smiled as a familiar feeling began to come over him. His heart was pumping a little faster; adrenaline was flowing freely through his body; sweat beaded his brow and coated the palms of his hands beneath the heavy fabric of his gloves.

There was no doubt about it, he loved his work and he was damn good at it.

At 33-years-old, David Mingus was at the peak of his militant powers. Young and single, fit and healthy, well-trained, highly-educated and politically motivated, he was the type of professional activist that had become the bane of governments and corporations the World over.

Not for him the namby-pamby, fair-weather activism of email-sending and letter-writing that seemed to spring up whenever some barely-literate Hollywood film star grew a conscious and became the face of some new and often trivial ‘cause-of-the-week’.

He was committed and passionate about big causes and was always ready to go wherever that passion might lead.

From London to Jerusalem, Seattle to Sydney; from jumping into the freezing oceans to stop Japanese Whaling ships, to beating back illegal timber-cutters in the sweltering heat of the Amazon Rainforest – like some militant superhero, wherever there was a protest against corporate greed or government incompetence, David Mingus would be there.

This attitude had found its seed at University.

He’d been a bit of a loner back then – a bespectacled, gangly nobody.

The problem, he had realized early on, was that he was not really interested in music or drinking – a prerequisite for a University social life – and as for drugs, well, he left those to the real hardcore crowd, the 60s ‘sexual revolutionaries’ who had morphed from swinging, spliff-smoking, LSD-takers to pipe-smoking, tweed-wearing lecturers.

He had a mild interest in politics though and had eventually fallen in with an earnest-sounding group of left-wing thinking students.

To begin with he had latched on to them as much to have someone to talk to as to satisfy any urge to voice his political leanings.

But, if he were honest, he had not really felt truly comfortable with them either.

They were ‘Champagne Socialists’, that’s how he liked to refer to them now - a Che Guevara T-shirt wearing crowd who gathered under the gnarled old oak tree outside the science labs each lunchtime to talk, seemingly knowledgably, of the utopia that was Communist Russia, of the brilliance of the films of Ken Loach and the genius of Marx and Engels, all while complaining that two lectures per week was a bit much and wondering just which investment bank they would work for once they’d finished their degree in ‘Ruthless Capitalist Business Bastardry‘.

After a few months he had realised the group were nothing but a bunch of pretentious wankers, happy to espouse thoughts and ideas which they had no real faith in as long as it made them seem ‘cool’ or politically and socially conscious.

But however much he despised them now, he did owe them this much at least - they had awakened him to the ideas and philosophies of the Left and, gradually, fighting for the rights of communities against corporations; for the safety of workers against the need for company profits; for the rights of poor nations exploited by the governments of the rich; fighting for the planet against those who polluted without thought - these fights, these issues, became all-consuming for him.

After University he had refused to return to the comfortable middle-class existence that his parents enjoyed.

Not for him the monotony of regular life – the house, car, wife and 2.5 kids. No way would he sit back and waste his life with the petty concerns of mortgage repayments or whether a 4wd or station-wagon was a better choice of family car – there was more important work to be done.

With University over he had chosen not to sit back, do nothing and let life pass him by. He would make his voice heard, no matter what. And so he had chosen to go out and travel the planet in search of wrongs to right, of fights to fight, of justice and fair play.

And 10 years on that search had led David Mingus here, to the dark shadows of this forest, to crouching and waiting in the freezing cold of the dead of night, waiting for the seconds to tick by, waiting to embark on what, he was sure, would be the most significant action of his career.

He glanced skyward. His luck was in. The moon would be covered for at least a few minutes and everything around him would be shrouded in darkness.

He checked his watch.

2.30am.

Time to go.

CHAPTER 3

Guy Blake had been the night shift Security Chief at SekMet Pharma for 10 years. And they had been a good 10 years – a decade of nights filled with reading the novels of Patricia Cornwell, watching re-runs of Star Trek on one of the many screens arrayed on the wall of the main security office, and catching a couple of hours sleep during the early morning hours.

It was a sweet job for an old soldier like himself – unchallenging in every way and perfect for a man whose ambitions went only as far as wanting two weeks on the Costa del Sol every July and retirement in a small house by the sea.

Which was not to say he wasn’t good at his job – on the contrary, he had decades of experience in the security game – but he had got used to the quiet life and things didn’t get much quieter than a night shift at SekMet.

In all the time he had worked there, absolutely nothing had gone wrong, at least not on his shift.

There had been rumours once, years ago, that there was going to be a protest outside the main gates – apparently the long-haired hippy types had got themselves in a bit of a froth and bother over some rumour or other about SekMet.

As it was, the ‘protest’ had turned out to be nothing more than a dozen or so yobbos holding placards and shouting at the two rather bored-looking policemen who had turned up to keep an eye on things. Most importantly, though, it had taken place on a Friday morning, which made it a dayshift problem. By the time he’d got in to work that evening it was all over.

Tonight was looking like being a good night as well. He’d just caught two episodes back to back of the original series of Star Trek and a third was about to start. He’d checked in with the twelve men under his command and all was well, and his wife had cooked him one of her fantastic lasagnes – a piece of which he had just heated up in the microwave and which smelled so heavenly he could hardly keep the saliva from dribbling down his chin.

Yep, life was good.

He lifted his feet onto his desk, rested the plate of lasagne on to his not insubstantial stomach and was about to devour the first delicious mouthful when something happened that completely ruined his evening.

Without warning, and with hardly a sound, everything went dark – the fluorescent lights above him, the CCTV screens in front of him, the computers behind him. Everything.

Blake froze, his mouth open, the chunk of lasagne slowly slipping from the fork poised just inches from his open mouth. It took some moments for what was happening to sink in.

‘A power cut. Holy shit.’

He couldn’t think of a time when the lights had even flickered without authorisation, let alone failed completely, but there was no denying the darkness that enveloped him or the dim illumination provided by the emergency lighting that kicked in a few seconds later and bathed everything in its sinister red glow.

He sat up quickly, his dinner slopping messily from the plate as he threw it onto the desk and reached out for the Procedures Manual that hung on the wall beside him.

It had been years since he’d had to look at it and it was as fresh and crisp to the touch as the day it was printed.

But that was about to change as he tore through the pages, looking urgently for the words ‘Power Failure’.

He could feel little beads of sweat start to form on his forehead and along his spine, and knew it had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. It was anxiety – anxiety brought on by the knowledge that SekMet was not exactly an ordinary, run-of-the-mill office facility that required the services of its security personnel only to protect the six-month supply of paperclips in the stationery cupboard.

It was true that he did not know exactly what was kept in some of the laboratories within the complex, and if he were honest he didn’t really want to know.

What he DID know was that a power failure was one thing that was not going to make things any safer.

He found the passage he wanted in the Procedures Manual and began to scan the page, his finger running along the lines of text as he read.

And an icy chill gripped him. Protection of assets . . . perimeter security sweeps . . . notification of authorities . . . he had read those words without too much concern but Contamination . . . now that was a word that really frightened him.

He felt panic rise up like acid in his throat as he reached for his two-way radio.

Though he knew the dozen young men under his command would all want some reassurance from him, there was just one man he needed to speak to first.

‘Josh, come in Josh, I need a report on your situation immediately.’

He grimaced as he spoke. He knew the words had tumbled from him too quickly, made him sound desperate. And no doubt all those who had heard him now thought something was seriously wrong.

‘I’m here Sir,’ came the reply, the crackle of the radio not able to mask either the youthful character of the voice or the fear that coloured it.

‘What’s your situation?’

‘I don’t know. The power is out here. Emergency lighting is on but everything else is still down.’

Blake wiped the moisture from his brow. This was not what he wanted to hear, this was not what he wanted to hear at all.

‘Is everything okay Sir?’

‘Everything’s fine son,’ said Blake. But he knew it wasn’t.

His heart was pounding like a jackhammer, the sweat gathering quickly now and dripping down his face and soaking into the collar of his shirt.

He tried as best he could to calm himself and, more importantly, sound calm to the others and he turned his attention once more to the procedures manual.

‘Just follow procedure and you’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘The back-up generators should kick in any second. All I need for you to do is to make for the guard post outside the lab entrance and manually engage the air-lock door. Okay Josh? Can you do that?’

‘But what if the generators don’t power up?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Blake replied, though there was no conviction in his voice. ‘Just do as I ask. Get to the guard station and wait for the generator to start up. Once you’ve got power to the computer do a standard systems check and then run the laboratory security systems check program. Understand?’

‘But what if the generators don’t . . .’

Josh didn’t finish the sentence. From somewhere deep beneath the building, a low growl rumbled through the foundations as if some giant beast was waking from a long slumber, and the sound caused Blake to breathe a mighty sigh of relief.

‘Can you hear that, Josh? It’s the generators.’

‘Yes. Yes. I hear them,’ came the relieved reply.

‘Okay then. Everything’s going to be just fine. Now get to the station and do as I told you.’

The tension of the moment crackled like electricity as Blake waited for the young guard’s next report and though it seemed like an age it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two before Josh’s excited voice came tumbling through the radio, the relief evident in every syllable.

‘Got it. Okay . . . Okay, I’m at the station now. Door is locked. We have partial power here. Still only emergency lighting but the computer is up and running.’ he shouted. ‘BSL-4 Lab security program is running. Checking sensors now . . . filters are okay . . . airlock seals are intact . . . Okay . . . everything seems to be okay . . . The system isn’t registering any seal breaks or any contaminants in the air.’

Blake felt the weight of his fear lifting, his breathing becoming a little easier, his heart beating a little slower.

He checked the manual once more.

‘Right,’ he barked into the radio, ‘Johnson. I need you to call the power company and see if this balls-up happened at their end. If it did, tell them to get it fixed pronto. Everybody else get moving. We have to perform a Level One visual check on every building. Every room except the main labs has to be checked. Remember, the generators feed power to the critical laboratory and security systems first and then out to the other buildings so a lot of this place will still be in the dark. Be careful, keep your eyes peeled and report in every five minutes or earlier if you find something out of the ordinary. It doesn’t matter how minor that something might seem. Call in immediately. Got it?’

A chorus of affirmatives came in across the radio as his men moved to carry out his