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Back Extinction Game Save as PDF
Chapters (33)
  1. Title page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. Acknowledgements
  32. By Gary Gibson
  33. Copyright page

I whirled around to see who had come up behind me, but there was no one. I got up on the roof of the wrecked car, in preparation for dropping down on the other side, but before I could, my legs folded beneath me. A terrible fatigue swept through my muscles with such speed that I slid backwards off the car. I lay there on the weedy gravel, panting with fear and exhaustion as shadows crowded the edges of my vision. I listened to the voices come closer, wondering what they had shot me with.

I closed my eyes for just a moment, and that was all the shadows needed to reach out and swallow me entirely.

TWO

The next time I opened my eyes, it was to see faintly buzzing strip lighting directly overhead.

I jerked upright, to find myself in a hospital bed at one end of a boxlike room, its walls painted in that particular institutional shade of pink designed to soothe and calm the violent and insane. I saw a sink to my right, white cabinets on my left. There was a single window covered over by a heavy black blind that allowed no light through. There were no clocks, or anything that might tell me what time of day or night it might be.

Just beyond the foot of the bed stood a door with a broad window to one side, through which I could see another room of the same approximate dimensions as the one I occupied. It was empty, however, apart from a row of lockers.

I looked down and saw I was wearing disposable blue paper pyjamas that crinkled as I moved. I saw also that my right hand had been handcuffed to a metal rail running along one side of the bed. My left hand, at least, remained free. I yanked experimentally at the chain a couple of times, but it was soon clear that brute force was never going to set me free.

I stared through the pane of glass at the outer chamber. I wondered if I might be inside some kind of isolation unit. If they thought I might be carrying the EVE virus with which Red Harvest had wiped out the rest of humanity, that would make sense. They had shot me with a tranquillizer dart, I felt sure, then brought me to this place . . . wherever it might be.

I leaned over the side of the bed and saw a bedpan. The sight alone filled me with an overwhelming urge to urinate. Despite my shackles, I was at least able to get both feet on the ground and make use of the pan. Then I lay back, still groggy from the effects of the tranquillizer, and fell asleep until Alice came to me.