Just before he reached her, she grabbed him and rolled him off of her, onto his back.
David closed his eyes. “I’m sorry—”
“No, it’s, I felt it. You’re bleeding, your bandages ripped.” Kate pulled his shirt back and began working on the wound.
David panted and stared up at the clouds on the balloon. He hoped that somewhere below them, Milo was sitting at the top of the mountain, safe, and that someday, somewhere, he would find the stillness within.
PART III:
THE TOMBS OF ATLANTIS
CHAPTER 97
After Kate had finished repairing David’s bandages, she crawled to the other side of the balloon’s basket and slumped against the wall. For a long time, they simply floated through the air, feeling the breeze on their faces, staring at the snow capped mountains and green plateau below. Neither said a word. Kate’s muscles burned from the exertion of pulling him into the basket.
David finally broke the silence. “Kate.”
“I want to finish the journal.” She drew the small leather bound book out of the sack with the medical supplies. “Then we can make plans. Ok?”
David nodded, then leaned his head back against the basket and listened as Kate read the last few pages.
February 4th, 1919
One year after I awoke in the tube…
The world is dying. And we killed it.
I sit at the table with Kane and Craig, listening to the statistics like they were the odds for a horse race. The Spanish Flu (that’s what we’ve sold the world on, how we’ve “branded” the pandemic) has moved to every country in the world. Only a few islands have been spared. It’s killed countless millions so far. It kills the strong, sparing the weak, unlike any other flu epidemic.
Craig talks at length, using more words than the information deserves. The long and short is that no one has found a vaccine, and of course the Immari don’t expect they will. But they think they can still sell it as the flu. That’s the “good news,” Craig announces.
And there’s more of it. Overall the mood and assessment has turned optimistic: the human race will survive, but the losses will be intense. 2-5% of the total human population, somewhere between 36-90 million people are expected to die from this plague we unleashed. Around 1 billion will be infected. They estimate the current total human population at 1.8 billion, so “not a bad shake” are the words. Islands offer good protection, but the reality is that people are scared, and the whole world is holed up, avoiding anyone who might be infected. Estimates from the war are around 10 million dead. The plague, or Spanish Flu rather, will kill 4-10 times more people than the war. Of course hiding it is a problem. The war and outbreak combined, roughly 50-100 million people, gone.
But I only think of one, and I wonder why she died and I lived. I am a shell. But I hold on for one reason.
Kane looks at me with cold, wicked eyes, and I stare back. He demands my report, and I speak slowly, in a lifeless, absent tone.
I report that we’ve excavated the area around the artifact. “Weapon,” he corrects. I ignore him. I offer my opinion: once we disconnect it, we can move inside the structure. They ask questions, and I answer mechanically, like an automaton.
There’s talk of the war ending, of the press focusing on the epidemic, but of course, there are plans for that.
There’s talk of doctors in America studying the virus, talk that they might discover that it’s something else. Craig placates, as always. He has the situation well in hand, he assures everyone. He claims that the virus seems to be winding itself down, like a forest fire that has almost run its course. With the pandemic waning, he believes research interest will follow.
The working theory is that this doomsday plague grows weaker with retransmission. The people in the tunnels were killed instantly. The people who found them got sick and followed shortly after, and so on. Anyone infected at this point is likely five or six transmissions away from Gibraltar; hence the climbing survival rates. There have been two subsequent waves of outbreak. We believe both were caused by early-infection bodies from Gibraltar or Spain reaching high-population areas.
I argue that we should go public, trace anyone who left Gibraltar. Kane disagrees. “Everyone dies, Pierce. Surely I don’t have to remind you of that. Their deaths serve a purpose. We learn more every time a wave of infection occurs.” We shout at each other until we’re both hoarse. I can’t even remember what I said. It doesn’t matter. Kane controls the organization. And I can’t afford to cross him.
October 12, 1938
Almost twenty years have passed since my last entry. It’s a long lapse, but don’t think nothing has happened. Understand me.
I started this journal as a respite from the dark desperation of being a wounded man in a helpless place. A way to sort through my own despair, an avenue of reflection. Then it became a testament to what I believed to be some conspiracy. But when you watch the thing you love the most in the world die, a victim of something you unknowingly unleashed, the product of a deal you made for her hand, the sum of your whole life reduced to a burning coal in the palm of your hand… it’s hard to pick up a pen and write about a life you think no longer matters.
And deeds you’re ashamed of. That’s what followed the day in that tent.
But things have gone far enough. Too far. This is the end of the road for me. I can’t be a party to genocide, but I also can’t stop it. I hope you can.
Since my last entry, the following has transpired:
The Device:
We call it the Bell, or for Kane and his German cronies, Die Glocke. Kane is convinced it’s a super weapon and that it will either kill the entire human race or cause a rapture, leaving the genetically superior and killing anyone who might be a threat to this chosen race. He’s become obsessed with his racial theories, the pursuit of this master race that can survive the coming apocalypse, the machine. Conveniently, he believes he’s a member of this supreme race. The research efforts have focused on how to create this master race in a controlled fashion, before the supposed Atlantean attack. Since they extracted the Bell, I’ve been marginalized, but I still hear things. He has taken the Bell back to Germany to conduct experiments near Dachau. The situation is desperate in his Fatherland, with widespread famine and dangerously high unemployment. The government there is easy to manipulate. He’s taken full advantage.
The Immaru:
I’ve learned more about the history of the Immari and their sister faction, the Immaru. At some point in antiquity, the Immari and the Immaru were one group, presumably as recently as the time of the Sumerians, the first written history we have. In Sumerian Mythology, Immaru simply means ‘the light.’ Kane believes the Immaru have known about the device and the fate of the human race for thousands of years, since before the flood. His theory is that the Immari, his people, were a group of Immaru rebels who believed man could be saved, but they couldn’t convince their fellow members of this super race. According to Kane’s history, his Immari ancestors forsook their own safety to journey out of the Aryan homeland into Europe where they believed they would find the ruins of Atlantis that Plato wrote about, and with it, the keys to humanity’s salvation.