Читать книгу The Fallen Heroine - Fabienne Gschwind - Страница 27

"Shall we take another selfie, with Fort Boyard in the background?", my brother asked and I stood next to him, where he immediately took a 2D photo with his retro camera. My brother was a big fan of historical digital photography and had an old screen computer to process the data exactly as it had been done a century ago.

I was on vacation, but had to be available should a special mission be called. But I thought that was fair enough and actually I couldn't wait to test out my new knowledge in a large-scale mission.

We had been together for a few days. I had taken my brother around La Rochelle, we had surfed the waves on autokite boards. Then I paid for him to take a day trip on horseback because he loved to ride - while I went to work. Today we took a day trip together on a boat and we were headed to Fort Boyard. It's an impressive fort that stands in the middle of the sea near La Rochelle, between the mainland and Île d'Oléron, and has been used as a filming location for television shows since time immemorial.

I was on call and wore the special underwear for combat gear under my clothes. Somehow, I felt it was necessary. When my wrist computer beeped, my feeling was confirmed.

"Mr. Junior Sailor, this is the watch officer," Thibault jokingly called into the line, "an elite unit mission is coming up, somewhere in the Massif Central. We've locked on to your ship and will pick you up there. The captain has already been informed."

My brother seemed pleased. "That'll make a cool picture when your Decacopter picks you up from the ship right away. Don't worry about me, I was going back this evening anyway," he said, patting me on the back.

The captain instructed me to wait on the upper deck while I made sure my brother was allowed to stand on the bridge to take a few pictures.

Finally, our decacopter flew in and a rope with a harness was lowered. I made an effort to tense my body so I didn't look like a sack of potatoes and saluted my brother into the camera, because I knew he would love it. And, of course, because a bunch of other tourists were pointing their various recording devices at me.

Then I was pulled into the booth.

"We should do dramatic performances like this more often. It increases our publicity," Gabin said, closing the door while Emily handed me my battle gear. I was looking forward to an exciting repro hunt. From this I could tell I had already become much more confident.

The mission was about a wolf pack in the Tarn region, the Vallé du Tarn. Everyone was convinced that they were not normal, but trained repros that had escaped from Auvergne. ReS headquarters then organized a massive large-scale operation.

We were stationed in La Malene. The whole region was almost deserted, but La Malene was bustling and people had dressed up in 21st century style. There were some hotels for tourists and old-fashioned canoe rentals were competing for customers.

Of all this, we saw only the empty canoes and the overdimensioned posters and advertising stands. Most of the people had voluntarily evacuated and retreated to their second homes or to relatives. In any case, the backcountry of France was practically uninhabited, with ruined villages or ghost towns everywhere, of which we didn't even know the names anymore... relics of a time long gone.

After gathering weapons and rations, we flew around in search of the wolves. With Tamara and Gabin we formed a trio, while Emily would coordinate the other ReS units. The region was beautiful. So the area of operation stretched from the gorges of the Tarn and Jonte rivers to the Causses. The Causses are these limestone plateaus in the Massif Central. To our chagrin, there are also countless caves there. Since we already had experience, we were sent straight to one.

"...on the neighboring Causse Noir there are two famous cave systems that were visitor magnets until the apocalypse. But neither has been reopened yet, for lack of personnel. That means they could be an ideal loophole if another terrorist is holed up somewhere. The 'Aven Armand' cave even had a funicular ..."

We took off and quickly arrived at the former tourist attraction of Aven Armand. A decaying playground and picnic area lined a huge parking lot. We unhooked and walked to the dilapidated house that had housed a small museum and the store at the time. We tried to reach the funicular tunnel, but it was completely filled in. A tin sign adorned the blocked tunnel: 'Here 25 people had holed up during the apocalypse. All starved to death as they could not get back,' it read.

"Exhilarating," Tartelette opined, examining an ancient, weathered site plan. But the huge cavern had another entrance, which was a full eighty meters above the cave floor.

We found the entrance quickly, as an old, rusted fence was erected around it. The Ghosty hovered overhead, glowing like a magical dragonfly under the black storm cloud that was approaching.

The rusty fence and the approaching thunderstorm nearly doomed us, but we didn't know that yet.

We rappelled down. The sight was magnificent. I floated past 80 meters above a forest of stalactites and other formations. The speleologues, who were on video cameras to help us, were also enthralled. "This is a sight no one has seen in 100 years!" they exclaimed enthusiastically, and Thibault also commented that our live streaming viewership numbers really skyrocketed as more and more people tuned in.

"It smells like repro!" said Tartelette laconically, and now I smelled it too, a very peculiar smell ... like stale.

A drama was emerging: the 25 people were not dead but wandering around. It was horrible to look at them and I felt a shiver down my spine. The repros were almost unrecognizable as people, they were covered with the gray slime, some of them were missing limbs or were twisted in an abnormal way. I quickly gave myself Adalin to become calmer.

Up to this point, everything was no problem, because we could have simply retreated. But repros straight from the apocalypse are worth a fortune because they carry the original retroviruses. A great fuss was made on the part of the connected ReS headquarters and they immediately sent for professional repro catcher troops from Africa.

However, for reasons that were not clear, the new ReS commodore believed that we might have contracted the original retroviruses. His name was LeBoeuf, and he had taken command less than a week ago from Laura Cortaux, who was in failing health.

"You're contaminated with the primordial virus and you're just going to climb out of there. You stay right where you are, and don't climb a single millimeter higher! That is exactly what the protocol says. Paragraph 14 Section 89c."

The matter was so lucrative that the Commodore-in-Chief spoke to us personally. But Tamara went full confrontational.

The conversation that ensued was simply a headache.

"Excuse me, Commodore. The cave has a natural exit, which means the viruses could have floated out at will. We always had our visors down and no direct contact. Then paragraph 14 is null and void..."

The commodore's voice screeched shrilly into our speakers again, "I don't give a damn! You stay down there, Capitaine."

During the exchange of words, the repros started climbing up the stalagmites.

"There's no way you're moving higher!" the commodore yelled again when he saw this.

"Then we'll just zap them!" Tamara was about to give the order, but was interrupted.

"NO. Under no circumstances! You can't kill them, we need them alive. The other major powers will pay us a fortune, as research subjects."

"With all due respect, Commodore, what ReS unit did you actually serve in? You know you can't kill repros with zappers by any stretch of the imagination. For that, you have to decapitate them or shoot them to a pulp ..."

"Shut up, Capitaine! I served 20 years in the USDU Special Forces before I was appointed Commodore of the ReS a few weeks ago. What about you? What do you have to show for it?" the Commodore snapped at Tartelette. Thibault interfered via private radio, desperately pleading with Tamara to be reasonable and not get into trouble with the big boss. This spurred Tamara on even more...

But the argument continued and the commodore cursed. He ordered us not to shoot at the repros so we wouldn't kill them! What a bullshit.

The boss pointed out to him that the radio was being broadcast to the public and that at the moment there were a good five million people watching live.

"What nonsense, my radio is tap-proof. I can cuss around here all I want, and I can also dispute every word you say and claim you disobeyed my orders."

"Commodore, it may well be that your radio is tap-proof, but my side is recorded as usual and broadcast in realtime."

That's when the problems started. The thunderstorm, which had been heard in the background for a while, broke out with force.

The lightning must have fully struck the metal post to which our ropes were attached. They held up, but not the post. Gabin and I who were tied to the same post fell. Thanks to Tamara's fall training, I got off easy. Only Gabin crashed between two stalactics and remained pinned. The repros were now moving purposefully toward him. Fortunately for us, the repros were very "rusty". Probably they had hardly moved during the last decades and their joints were hardly working anymore. Meanwhile, Tamara had also rappelled down and helped to rescue Gabin. We zapped our way through the horde of zombies that moved very slowly.

A blessing for the ReS headquarters, because since the repros were moving in slow motion we had time to either zap them or even push them back with our bare hands. So the camera shots were not blurry. I did my best to impress with my newly acquired martial arts tricks and kicked or boxed the zombies aside. Because of the continuous bombardment our zappers overloaded again and again and there was nothing left but to push the repros back.

To stand in the middle of a horde of zombies would have given me worst nightmares months ago. But now I felt strong and invulnerable. Thanks to Adalin and Tamaras extreme training.

Finally we dragged Gabin to the rope and pulled ourselves up. Out of reach of the zombies. Now that we were covered in repro slime, there was nothing to do but hang from the rope and wait for the storm to subside and our reinforcements to set up a decontamination unit.