Inevitability pt 4
Inevitability pt 4
The video recording continued to playback. "Fire did not stop them either. Some would burn, and "die", true, but they felt no pain, and they continued to trudge forward, towards the barracks, where the surviving prisoners had barricaded themselves. As we watched, the prison security system sprung to life; towers lifting out of the ground on the four corners of the perimeter, a laser grid flashing into life., five beams of concentrated light forming a 'wall' around the building. But it did nothing to stop the infected. It was carnage, at first, the infected being cut into pieces by the lasers as they marched into it, though we knew it would not last. The sheer numbers of the infected, constantly marching forward, drained all the power the lasers needed to function. By the time the first of the infected made it to the door, we cut the live feed. Though the door was titanium with carbon nano- tube weave, it would not survive the onslaught for long. Though we did not see, we guessed what was happening. Hundreds upon hundreds of the infected; literally tons and tons of mass would soon be pounding against the walls, the door, anything they could reach. The prisoners were trapped like rats, and doomed. Everyone on the bridge, from the greenest of recruits to battle hardened admirals knew what had to be done, but the scientists convinced us to wait, because they wanted to see more, to understand the infected better. Orders were given, and spy satellites orbiting the planet blinked into life. What we saw convinced us even more of the certainty of what we had to do. The infected, having eaten or converted all sentient life on the planet, were consuming anything they could find; grasses, plants, small animals, everything. They were destroying all the life on the planet. Birds and fish seemed to be the only thing that they didn't eat, because they could not swim or fly to catch them. But that didn't stop them from trying to.
With all the gravity due to a situation such as this, we set about to cleanse the planet. It seemed such a waste to glass a habitable planet, bet we knew there was no other way to keep the infection from spreading. The plasma batteries hummed as they charged. Instead of pulses, we sent waves and waves of the superheated electron cloud to coat the surface of the planet. As the plasma encountered the atmosphere, it boiled it away, converting it to more plasma. When it hit water, which covered a majority of the planet's surface, it sent columns of steam miles into the sky. Nothing on the land masses could survive; the plasma carbonized all organic molecules, and fused the silica and iron in the rocks and under the ground into a glass. As we left the system, the glass still glowed, and within hours, all liquids on the surface and the rest of the atmosphere would escape into space." A silence, and then, "We are not monsters; we did what we had to understand our enemy, to try to protect ourselves from them. Had the infected the means to, they would have done the same to us, to any race that tried to stop them. " The recording dies out, replaced first by static, and then by darkness.
John sits quietly in the cave, stunned by what he had just seen. Outside, the infected continue to swarm against the rock face; trying to get to John, moaning and groaning all the while. The sounds of the infected drifted on to enter John's ears, snapping him out of his stupor, and he remembers he needed to escape, to try to get to the launch pad. He puts the recording aside and begins digging through the gear pile. Not knowing what most of the human technology was or what it was capable of doing, John was searching essentially blindly. There was a small sphere, buried in the pile, what John was looking for, though he did not know it at the time. Covered in symbols, it is a human anti-personnel explosive, used in violent riot situations. One of John's paws brushed against it as he was pulling items out from the pile. Delicate sensors on the explosive's surface detected his paw, and a tiny projector, built in to provide instructions to unwary users, flashed to attract his attention.
Startled at the light, John jumps back, away from the pile, then moves towards it once again to find the source of the light. He reached into the gear mound and, guided by the light the device was emitting, pulls out the "grenade". John, upon seeing what was making the light, asks, "Why don't the humans label anything with what it is? How am I supposed to know what the hell this thing is or how to use it?" At the sound of his voice, the "grenade" projects a screen into the air. Characters appear on the screen, in the human written language, then briefly disappear, only to reappear in the language John can read.
The screen reads "Class 3B Anti-Personnel Explosive- To arm the device, use the red button. To disarm the device, press the green button. Warning: Once the device is activated there is a three (3) second period to throw or disarm the device before detonation."
"What the hell, either this'll work, or I'll be trapped up here until I can find another way out." There was a small pneumatic hiss, and then a portion of the device fell away, exposing the two buttons. John carefully pressed the red button, arming the device, and he then threw the explosive out of the cave, where it landed in a dense cluster of the infected. The infected turned and began to moan at the disturbance, but not for long. A bright blue dome of energy was released as the "grenade" exploded. Milliseconds later, a sonic boom threw John off his feet, and he landed deeper in the cave. Where before the infected milled, only a crater remains; no scraps of clothing or flesh lie about, the blue wave completely destroying the traces of them.
John stood up slowly, sore from hitting the ground so hard. "Those human bombs pack quite a punch." He checked to make sure the map and the ticket were still in his pocket. They were. He grabbed his backpack and began once again to fill it with the human gear. When he had everything packed away, he shouldered the pack and climbed down the rock face, which had been pitted by the blast. When his feet touch the ground, he checks again to be sure that the map and ticket did not fall out of his pocket while he was climbing down. They did not. He pulled the map out of his pocket, and studied it intently. The launch pad, which was his goal, was only about five miles north of the cave he was just in. To the north, three columns rise miles into the sky, defying gravity. John cries out "That has got to be the launch pad; the map doesn't show any other human settlements for hundred miles!" John began to run towards the pillars, hoping that there would still be people there when he arrived.
To be continued