BZRK: Apocalypse (BZRK 3)

“Oh, look at that! Look at that video!” This was spoken as an order not a request, so Bug Man looked. The tape showed an American Airlines 787 roaring down from the sky and smashing into a very large, gray Gothic church. The announcer said something about the cathedral at Reims.

“Not that great an explosion, though,” Lear opined.

Suddenly the BBC was off the air, replaced by static.

“I knew this would be a problem,” Lear said. “I avoided messing with media folks, yeah, but there’s no way to stop someone cutting their power.” She began flipping through channels. Static and more static. Then what appeared to be a Japanese news station with a fixed camera aimed at a woman who was giggling and stabbing her arm with broken shards of wooden chopsticks.

Al Jazeera was on, but in Arabic. A Russian station had a bespectacled, overweight man with a bottle of vodka before him on the anchor desk. He seemed to be announcing news, but his voice was slurred, and as they watched he began weeping.

“CNN! Yes! See, that’s why I took it very easy on Atlanta.”

Lear seemed to think she deserved some praise for her foresight.

“At this time we cannot confirm that the event in Norfolk, Virginia, was a nuclear explosion, although Norfolk is a major naval base that does handle ships carrying nuclear weapons.”

“No video?” Lear moaned.

“We now have video of an oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, which is burning.”

“I’ve seen oil refineries burn,” Lear complained. “I’ve never seen a nuked city. Come on, they must have some video.”

“Here you go.” Bug Man plated the bacon and eggs.

“Next time drain the bacon a little better. Blot it with a paper towel.”

They went into the dining room, all rich, dark wood with high-backed chairs. A chandelier hung above the table.

“It’s going well, don’t you think? Yeah?”

“Yes.” What else could he say?

“Early stages yet.” She munched thoughtfully. “I wonder if I should spread it out, you know? My first plan was to keep up the pace, sixteen thousand an hour. But what if … No. No, I’m sticking with the original plan. I don’t want to start second-guessing myself.”

No, you wouldn’t want that, Bug Man thought. He wondered if his mother was still alive. Had she killed herself like so many seemed to do? Was she even now wandering the streets, raving? Maybe hurting other people? Maybe being hurt herself?

What was the point of caring? Lear had won. The world was going crazy. The human race was killing itself in an orgy of madness.

“I have some work to do,” Lear said. “You stay and watch.”

“I don’t think—”

“That wasn’t a request, yeah? Stay and watch. You know what to look for.”

“I do?” Bug Man was mystified.

“The Armstrongs had self-replicating nanobots. Yeah. Maybe the fire at the Tulip got them all. Maybe not.” Lear shook her head and her mouth was a grim, worried line. But she cheered up considerably when the news announced that Berlin, Germany, had been hit by a nuclear weapon.

THIRTY

The C-130 carrying Plath and her crew, as well as Tanner and seventeen ex-military volunteers from McMurdo, landed at Cathexis Base to find employees there bewildered and frightened. Their medical team had all been ordered to Forward Green a day earlier without explanation. And the Plague of Madness had spread there as well. They had seven people locke

d up. A dormitory had been burned to the ground, killing three.

The C-130 flew on to Forward Green. It was a cargo plane, a cavernous, incredibly noisy and very cold open space with webbing seats along both sides. Large dotted lines had been painted on the curved walls, indicating just where the propellers would chew through the fuselage should one come off in flight.

“This is their only other facility, so far as we know,” Tanner said.

The plane circled, coming around into a strengthening wind. The sun was low on the horizon, as much like night as Antarctica got this time of year.