Dark Ages

“You must do it, old man, or you’ll never get the empire off the ground,” he stated aloud, using his haughtiest tone. Arrogance always lifted his spirits. Arrogance was his best character trait.

He made for the trapdoor, covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and stepped into the blackness. He felt his way down the steep emergency stairs, which had buckled from the heat, and didn’t turn on the flashlight until he reached the bottom.

After more vomiting, he picked his way among the corpses. They were charred from the initial blast, but the stone-crumbling heat had missed this place and left, more than enough human flesh to putrefy. He hoped that was a good sign. Maybe his treasure would have survived, too.

Then he saw the state of the containment boxes, the steel walls black and pitted from the heat. The things that had once been inside would be nonfunctional. Dead.

He followed the only corridor, going deep into the earth, until he came to the emergency-isolation development room. Oddly the aluminum containment chamber was open and burned. The corpse on the floor smelled to high heaven, but he wasn’t burned at all. The fire that destroyed the castle hadn’t touched this chamber, and yet the containment cell showed signs of superheating.

In the congealed blood on the floor, the Englishman found a thin crust of opaque crystal.

They had escaped, and then they were burned. Tiny crystal splotches indicated that the fleeing entities had been assassinated, one colony after another. They didn’t get far.

His worry grew, but there was still one last place to look. The drunken American—the same man who secretly removed the phosphorus incendiaries from this wing of the laboratory—had provided him with this secret.

By virtue of his renowned patriotism, unquestioned loyalty and distance from London politics, the Englishman had been asked to lead a security probe into assorted secret projects. That was how he found out about the secret work at Loch-Tweed Castle. It was a joint American and British weapons-development effort. Those very few British who were aware of the project were worried about the security measures at the laboratory.

After gaining his confidence, the Englishman wheedled the truth about the security out of the American researcher. About the sabotaged self-destruct system—and about the hidden sample.

‘I couldn’t bear it if all my work was burned alive,” the American slurred after five big gin and tonics.

“Oh, I agree. Good work,” the Englishman said. “I assure you, this is between the two of us.”

Soon afterward, it was the Englishman’s secret alone. After two more gin and tonics, the American had passed out. The Englishman put him in his car, started it and put the transmission in Drive, then slammed the door as the vehicle began rolling away. It rolled directly off the road into the Thames. Windows open, the car went down in seconds and wasn’t hauled out again until morning.

The American researcher’s hidden sample was right where he said it would be—buried two feet under the earth, directly beneath the destroyed aluminum cube. The Englishman unearthed it in minutes. The insulated box contained twenty-four stainless-steel straws, each of which could wipe out a city.

The tiny glass capsule in the bottom of the box was green. The chemicals inside the capsule would react to damaging heat by turning red, permanently, but the capsule was still green.

Which meant the creatures—things, devices, whatever—inside the steel straws were still alive. Viable, functional, whatever.

The Englishmen had just become the most powerful man on the planet.

This was only right and proper.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, but around these parts folks knew him as the Big Rig Bandit of 1-44.

“You’re him, ain’t you?” asked the terrified driver.

“Who?” Remo asked.

“The Big Rig Bandit of 1-44. You’re him.”

“Never heard of him. But I’m him.”

The driver was no longer driving. She had been a minute ago, barreling down the interstate and listening to the CB chatter about the bandit. There was a lot of chatter. People were scared.

“You been stealing rigs up and down this stretch of road,” the driver said. “Got yourself a peculiar reputation.”

“How’d my reputation get peculiar? I only started hijacking eight hours ago.”

“You ain’t gonna hurt me, are you?”

Remo frowned. He didn’t like having a reputation. “They say I hurt people out there?”

The driver cranked her head to look at Remo, but it did her no good, what with one of her own grease rags tied around her head to make a blindfold.

She had never heard him, never sensed him. All of a sudden, she felt a tiny pinch on the neck and felt her arms and legs stop working. In a flash she was scooted into the passenger seat and belted in, and only then did she realize she had been blindfolded. She had expected to feel her vehicle veer out of control and crash, but it drove on as if nothing had happened.

His first words to her had been, “Just consider me your relief driver.”