Читать книгу The Fallen Heroine - Fabienne Gschwind - Страница 10

In the morning at the shooting training I ran for the first time a simulation with zombies - or politically correct said: genetically reprogrammed humans - and I killed all of them without any problems.

That put my mind at ease.

Finally, Gabin called for me. We were about to leave to train at a larger shooting range. I got into the vehicle with the others. Tamara had a laceration on her forehead that she didn't have yesterday.

Gabin asked her if she had done another wrestling match. Our commander shook her head:

"Didn't happen until after."

Yves, the one driver, turned to us and grinned:

"Well, was it a bar fight or the bouncer robot at the 'Bar Rouge' again?"

He collected a painful slap from Tartelette.

"We have kids on board. So don't talk nonsense." She smiled at me and then said, "It was quite harmless, a little ballet accident with my dance partner when we were practicing a 'pas de deux.' I slipped out of the gentleman's hands while doing an arabesque."

I was now really wondering who was taking the piss out of me. I could imagine a thrashing Tartelette in a barroom brawl much more easily than wearing a white tutu while dancing ballet. I must have looked really confused and everyone was laughing.

"We have a shooting range?", I finally asked after we had been driving in silence for minutes.

"Yeah just past Chatelion Plage," Emily said, checking some aggregate on her combat armor, "usually we go shooting and then swimming and ..." - "And then eat waffles," Gabin completed the program.

"STOP!" screeched Tartelette all at once. The driver slammed on his brakes in shock and Tartelette sprinted out of the vehicle. "Repros?", I asked, startled.

"No, Pineau," came the reply from Emily, who was examining another piece of her equipment. "Tartelette would never freak out like that over repros ... she only does that when she sees something edible."

And sure enough, after a few minutes, Tartelette returned with several bottles of Pineau. This is a local specialty alcohol, something in between cognac and red wine. It makes you drunk as hell, because it contains a lot of alcohol, is sweet, and you drink it ice cold. So you don't even notice the high percentage and cup too much of it too quickly....

Finally we arrived and unpacked the equipment for the shooting exercises. But there came another alarm: a repro cat in the middle of a village on Île de Ré.

Yes, if it's an outside operation, cows in a pasture for example, you can take your time. But when the critters are already running through the villages, things get dicey. The driver hit the gas. He had all the other automatic vehicles shooed aside by the control center. So he could speed through without any traffic problems.

This was my first major operation. My baptism of fire, so to speak, so I would like to describe everything in detail.

Thibault received so many emergency calls in a short time that he had to evacuate the village. The Île de Ré is an island just off La Rochelle and connected to the city by a quaint concrete bridge.

When we arrived in the city, Tartelette immediately had the rest of the island evacuated and because of the new fish repro danger, the navy was also already ordered in. At the height of Saint-Martin, the traffic was so dense due to the evacuation that nothing worked. "And let someone else say that France is underpopulated," Gabin joked, alluding to the fact that only 10% of the world's population had survived the repro apocalypse.

"Damn it," Tartelette cursed. "Hey driver, turn on the hover unit. We're going through the Marais Salants."

Our vehicle was equipped with hover jets, but they were only needed in emergencies because of the high energy consumption. A little later, we were chasing across the salt ponds called the Marais Salants, where the locals skimmed salt and sold it expensively around the world.

We roared across a small field where the famous potatoes thrived in the sandy soil. To Tamara's great sorrow, our hover drive shredded the plants.

By then we arrived in Les Portes, the village at the very end of the island. It was dead quiet - everyone together, including policemen and firemen had left the village in flight.

"It seems that an elderly lady kept her infected cat with her for weeks instead of reporting it. Probably an incomplete expression," Tartelette, who had radio communication with ReS headquarters, informed us.

I had learned that the expression of repros was quite different, depending on the strength of the reprogrammation. There were weak transformations, where the animals had only little powers and moved even slower than usual, up to the aggressive, full expressions, where they had almost super powers. I mostly listened to the radio traffic of the overall operation, where the ReS headquarters coordinated everything. During such large-scale operations, Tamara took over the coordination of everyone involved. Tartelette was given the operational command in each case and was thus allowed to command everyone. This was accepted by everyone involved - police, army and navy. This was her profession and she was occasionally flown to various large-scale missions all over France.

Meanwhile, two decacopters carrying army soldiers had shown up over the village. They would not land until Tartelette ordered them to. We got out.

"Groups of two, we'll roam the village and kill as many repros as we can. We'll meet at the cat house in twenty minutes. We'll work our way from there. Moussaillon to me."

Obediently, I attached myself to Tartelette's heels.

We walked through the marketplace, the stalls deserted and a light breeze of repro smell wafting over everything. I successfully killed two repro cats.

Then loud barking. Three dogs, rushed at us. They showed the reprogramming with full expression. In a flash, they dodged the zapper beams. With an abnormal speed one of them accelerated and with its mouth wide open it threw itself at me. I was paralyzed, the primal fear of these super-powered 'zombies' gripped me like a nightmare from which one never awakens. There was a bang as the dog's teeth slid down my visor. My helmet bulged inward.

I threw up my right arm and it bit into it. The armor cracked. Helpless, I tried to grab the machete with my left arm and strike with it. I knocked chunks of meat out of the dog without being able to slow it down. I missed hitting the neck. The zombie jerked his head around and almost dislocated my shoulder. He kept tearing and just pulled me along with him, I lost the machete. I felt his fangs digging through the armor.

But Tartelette was there and decapitated him. The armor was cracked, my helmet was slightly dented, the fangs had left deep holes. My arm throbbed from the pressure pain, but I had not been bitten. I wondered if my brother was watching the show and if he had thought I was going to die.

I was shaking all over. So much training, and I was almost killed in the first attack.

Slowly I understood why even professional soldiers didn't want anything to do with repros: The animals were unpredictable, not deterred by slogans like 'hands up' - 'drop your weapon' or fancy firearms. The armor we wore was just reassurance. And these superpowers surpassed anything I had imagined. Of course, who hadn't seen the surveillance videos of people being blown to bits in seconds? But the intensity of this attack surpassed anything I had practiced.

But our gift for sensing the animals bought us the few milliseconds we needed. A few milliseconds that set us apart from everyone else.

We heard over the radio how Gabin was killing a flock of repo gulls. There was nothing else suspicious in the main street. Tartelette took some croissants from the vacant bakery.

Then we passed through a residential area with cute one-story villas. Our driver was behind us, following at walking speed. The armored vehicle was almost hermetically sealed and I had been told never to open the door during an operation. That could put the drivers in danger. Especially smaller infected animals could slip in at lightning speed.

Finally, we heard the some bells ringing. It was Gabin and Emily, who had grabbed two bikes from somewhere and caught up with us at the house in question. We went inside.

And almost at the same time I wanted to run out again. On the entrance floor lay the body of the old woman, her head was completely crushed and the skull was open. A rat was still licking out the rest of the brain. Gabin squished it with his boots. I choked dry. Emily patted me on the shoulders. Then the nausea subsided.

Only now did Emily give me the explanation of why we were even going back to the house where it had all started.

"It's not just that Tamara is a super fighter. She's the most decorated commander in the ReS, in part because she's been working hard on the spread of repros. She has developed a program to better understand and target the spread."

I nodded; I had picked up something about these programs in a ReS report. Tamara used them to record repros killed across Europe to predict epidemics. So the boss was not only a super fighter, but an above-average programmer.

"Let's get to the beach. The other ReS units will clean up the village and the surrounding area," Tartelette finally ordered after letting run several simulations in her software to help her to find the best next move.

A few minutes later we were already at the first beach called Trousse Chemise, as I could read on the superimposed map. "We're going to walk the shore now, and as soon as you see an aquatic animal that's a repro, you scream. It's all about finding out if the virus has jumped over yet."

The shore was one of those things. With the strong tides and shallow shores, the ocean was several hundred meters away, so there was quite a bit of shore to search. At a light jog, we hurried across the sandy bottom. I arrived at a small private oyster farm that now towered over water, and by then I smelled the foul repro stench.

"Oyster repro," I screeched in horror as several hundred oysters began snapping at me. Fortunately, they were firmly attached, or I probably would have been eaten by them. "Shit. That's all we need, all those fine oysters to be destroyed," Tartelette said disappointedly.

Suddenly our radios crackled rather loudly, "Everyone! Police, Military, ReS units present at Île de Ré. The German Emperor and his Merkelist party have given us an ultimatum; either we have the situation under control in four hours and prevent the virus from spreading to the sea, or they'll drop some hydrogen bombs on us."

That was it. The dreaded nuclear strike!

One's own country could make a request, or the neighboring states could. This usually happened when there was a danger of not being able to control a repro outbreak. Then there was nothing left but to destroy everything to avoid a major repro spread.

That was one of the reasons why Tamara was so famous: the last ten years she had been able to save at least fifteen cities from a nuclear strike. Most of the time, she had been hastily dispatched from ReS headquarters to the disaster site. There, with her instincts, fighting spirit, daring strategies, and organizational talent, she always somehow got the situation under control.

Still, I thought of the chaos that was now breaking out in La Rochelle and the surrounding area as everyone tried to get away as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Tartelette had not remained idle. For a heavy flying tank full of gun heads was speeding toward us. The boss had ordered him to wipe the beach and shore clean. She was convinced that the oyster bank was the only danger on this side of the island.

We barely made it to the vehicle before the military got going. Twice the shock waves of the explosions knocked me to the ground, but Gabin mercilessly dragged me on. Slowly I understood why Tartelette had always insisted that I should do more sports, especially endurance running. Even chubby Emily was panting far less than I was.

The driver put his foot down and at full speed we circled the tip of the island on the hover drive and chased to the other beach, which Tartelette calculated was the second most dangerous. The lighthouse of the Île de Ré loomed in the distance. While I barely had time to catch my breath, the others chased back down to the shore area. Even the light muscle boosters built into the combat gear didn't help.

"Don't look so dumb. Shoot the repro gulls down!" came the order from Tartelette. I raised the pump shotgun and took aim at the swarm that was bearing down on me. I emptied my magazine. But then another military decacopter arrived. It came flying at me from behind. Even under my combat helmet, I went half deaf as the high-tech helicopter mowed down the gulls four meters above me with its over-calibrated machine gun. I didn't even have to go chopping heads anymore, as only chunks of flesh rained down.

I took a deep breath and ran after my colleagues who were scanning the beach in a set pattern.

My lungs were burning and my legs felt like pudding. Despite the cooling of the combat suit, I was totally sweaty. Twice I stumbled and landed splat in the wet sand. "Driver, come here and pick up the boy, otherwise he'll collapse on us," I heard Tartelette order on the radio.

Just a few seconds later, the vehicle was beside me in active hover mode. I clung to the large rearview mirror and tried to somehow place my armored combat boots on the narrow running board. The driver drove along the high dunes and I focused on the stench as I tried to catch my breath.

The next few hours passed with searching, but no one found any evidence of any living thing that had been contaminated on the beach. More ReS troops had spread out on the other beaches, but other than our oyster colony, things were looking good.

Meanwhile, we had made it to the lighthouse, which was on another tip of the island. The driver had debarqued me as the vehicle's batteries were running low. Gabin opened his combat visor and I saw that he too was sweaty, "Well boss, does the Merkelist party still have their finger on the trigger?"

Actually, each of us had access to all radio traffic, but it seemed that only Tartelette managed to monitor everything and look for repros at the same time.

"Oh come on, by now it's our own people and our king president is supposedly almost shitting his pants over it."

"Why? Because he might have to give the death order for a few thousand people?" inquired Emily with a sniffle, because not all of them would get away in time.

"Bullshit, he's worried about his vacation villa on Île d'Oléron ..."

I saw our communications displays suddenly glow orange. This meant that the radio was now on a private channel and not broadcasting to the public. It was Thibault, who wanted to tell us something in confidence:

"Tamara, pay attention. We are live on the air. The king hates that kind of talk, you know that!"

"Yes, but the population loves it... We're going to have a snack and then search the rest." Determined, Tartelette headed for the small tourist district just below the lighthouse and made herself comfortable on the deserted terrace of the "Chez Marie" bistro.

"They make the best waffles around here. Cadet, go to the kitchen and take care of that. Gabin get something to drink and Emily see what ice cream is left." We all sprinted off to carry out the commander's orders while she herself went back to her simulations.

The waffle oven thing was easier than I thought it would be, and I managed to bake four waffles without burning them.

We all ate in silence and I laid my tired legs on a chair. Gabin did the same and was now lying there very comfortably. Too comfortable. Tartelette gave the chair legs a kick and Gabin flew to the floor.

Then the redeeming message, the nuclear strike had been lifted. The king himself announced that Commander Arlette, as he saw it, had the situation under control. Actually, that was high praise for our unit and for Tamara personally. But she did not respond.

We spent the rest of the day searching the coast. Unfortunately, the rest of the beach was more difficult to search, as it was no longer a sandy beach and we had to climb over overgrown boulders. Only in the evening we came to rest in Grignon near Ars-en-Ré. Since the island was still under quarantine, it had to be cleaned completely before we could leave.

"Thibault, any news from the other units?" asked Tartelette as she led us unerringly down a road.

Thibault briefly counted up the dead and wounded. "Otherwise, it's so boring that ReS headquarters has interrupted your broadcast."

I abruptly became aware again that the small cameras on our helmets were transmitting everything live. I had completely forgotten about that.

"I'm hungry, when are we going to take a break?" whined Gabin.

Tartelette had the solution for that right away and we stopped at a sinfully expensive wellness hotel. I looked for an empty room and was glad to finally get out of my hygienic underpants. They were a kind of diapers, like astronauts wore. Because during missions, we had a hard time taking off our combat gear.

Finally, we bathed together in the hot tub. Red, ugly welts on Tartelette's back caught my eye and I wondered what animal had injured her like that.

"After that we'll have something to eat and then we'll do some training on the beach and search the rest..." the captain mused to herself, not even seeming to think that maybe we were all knackered from today. I was sure she was joking.

But Tartelette's announcement was all seriousness on her part. We ate, standing in the kitchen, and then it was back to the beach. I was terribly tired and watched sleepily as an Army decacopter supplied us with extra ammunition and other equipment the boss had ordered.

Gabin thrust into my hand some sort of juggling club that looked like a primitive grenade. "Did you get those in World War I?", I asked, yawning. A hard slap on the back made my jaws snap together painfully.

"So kid, if you're tired, you take a shot of Adalin.”

Yes, the Adalin, that was a military sleep inhibitor, strictly forbidden outside the army. I watched as the boss operated my combat mount controls, and the hidden injector on my upper left arm itched briefly. After a few minutes, I felt refreshed. As if I had slept fourteen hours, and I was much more composed than before. By sundown, Tartelette had us doing wrestling drills in the sand and throwing rocks.

"You must stay limber, even on the ground and when a wriggling repro is on top of you. And one day, a rock may be the only weapon you have left!", Tartelette explained to me - the others seemed to have already heard this lecture.

Thibault provided us with the final information. With the weird clubs called “flame grenades”, we made a big fire. For repros are attracted by enormous flames. We stood guard until dawn.