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Author Topic: Original Short Story - Final Solution Zx  (Read 6460 times)

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Offline jagg0

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Original Short Story - Final Solution Zx
« on: March 17, 2013, 11:11:50 AM »
So, I figured I'd contribute my own OSS to the anthology. Mods, lemme know if this should go someplace else, and everyone else: Hope you enjoy! (Mods can enjoy, too :)



Jagg – Final Solution Zx

   The steel doors were shaking, trembling each time the men outside rammed the doors with whatever heavy object they had found. It wouldn’t be much longer before they broke in.
   Ben Riley walked over to a switch on the wall and turned the lights off. Now only the blue glare from the monitors lit the room. Retreating to a darkened corner, Ben lit a cigarette and tried to gather his thoughts.
   Once inside, Ben knew exactly what the armed men would do. The security cameras had recorded what had happened when they entered his headquarters, killing security forces and unarmed civilians alike.
   How the men had gotten so far inside his perimeter, Ben hadn’t a clue. They must have had inside help, some rat that had succumbed to the temptation of whatever cheese they had offered him. That rat had chewed a tunnel through his security net, turning off a motion sensor here, looping a security camera there.
   Ben wanted to find the traitor and show him what happened when a rat came face-to-face with a tiger. Ben owned a pen full of the beasts, all of them waiting to be infected with the Zx virus. Something for the “mighty hunters” who wanted a challenge.
   “Bunch of idiot schoolboys pretending to be men, that’s who those hunters really are,” Ben said to himself. Anyone who would willingly pit his life against something so deadly was a blasted moron. “And I must be the biggest moron of all for making the things.”
   Still, the money had been excellent – enough to transform his original facility, roughly the size of an amusement park, into a sprawling complex that covered the whole island. And there was still enough money left over to make Ben and his investors filthy stinking rich.
   But that much money had drawn certain undesirables. The human rights activists had come first, followed by a drove of humanity’s underbelly. All of them had been beaten off, but this latest threat had pierced Ben’s side.
   The doors had split open a little, and the men outside were shoving iron bars into the crack, forcing the doors open. It wouldn’t be long until they broke into the room and started shooting. Ben was glad he had sent his employees out the escape tunnel; what he had to do, he would do alone.

+

   Sean McNeil strode through the broken security doors, adjusting his beret as he walked. It had taken an explosive charge to finish opening the iron doors wide enough to walk through, but he and his men didn’t even wait for the smoke to clear before rushing inside.
   “Hello in there!” he shouted into the darkness of the room. “Anyone not dead already can surrender now. We will not harm you.”
   His men laughed; they knew Sean was a cold-hearted bastard who would rather shoot his own mother than take prisoners.
   Sean’s question met with nothing but silence, so he tried again. “C’mon now, don’t be shy! I’ve got a bottle of whiskey and a pack of smokes for the first person to surrender.”
   Again his men laughed, but this time there was a reply. “Go to hell,” a man said.
   Sean zeroed in on the source of the voice and started walking towards it. “Aha! We have a live one,” he exclaimed. The he murmured under his voice, “And soon to be a dead one.”
   Sean pulled his pistol out of its holster. The smoke was beginning to clear; he could barely make out the silhouette of a figure standing beside a bank of monitors. Sean could tell that the man was smoking a cigarette – he could see the fire glowing in its tip – and Sean was silently impressed that the man was calm enough to smoke. Usually when a man was this close to death, their hands were shaking so badly they couldn’t even keep their cig lit. The cowardice of these men had always disgusted Sean; he took great pleasure in shooting them.
   Still, holding a cigarette straight wasn’t enough to save a man’s life, Sean decided. He leveled the pistol at the glowing ember in front of the man’s mouth.
   “Stop,” the man said with authority. “I am Ben Riley, the creator and primary shareholder of this island. There’s something that you need to know.”
   This amused Sean – what could he possibly need to know at point? Sean had already won by taking control of the facility.
   Yet… there was always a chance that this was more than a stall tactic. Sean lowered his gun and said, “What is there to say Mr. Riley? You have lost, and your island has been nationalized by the Fireman’s Guard cell of the Irish Republican Army.”
   “The Fireman’s Guard?” Ben spit out. “That’s a prestigious name for a bunch of terrorists.”
   Sean wasn’t surprised to be called a terrorist; he had heard it too many times before by fools who didn’t understand what Sean was fighting for. But the slur still annoyed Sean.
   “Right then,” Sean replied. “Negotiations have ended.” Sean returned his pistol to target Ben’s insulting mouth.
   “Don’t you want me to tell you about the last line of defense I engineered? Even your rat doesn’t know about it,” Ben said. “It’s the final solution, to steal a phrase.”
   Sean considered a moment, then decided he was sick of dancing to the stuffed shirt's tune. “Not really,” he replied, finger tightening on the trigger. “Say goodbye, Mr. Bureaucrat.”
   “Goodbye, Deadman,” Ben said, pressing the trigger on the remote he held.
   Suddenly it was pitch black inside the room; the power had been cut. Sean fired his pistol blindly into the dark, trying to hit Ben Riley as he sprinted into the escape tunnel and sealed the door.

+

   Ben stumbled down the tunnel, leaving a trail of blood behind him. That murderous Irishman’s aim had been too good; even in the dark Sean had managed to figure out his trajectory and shoot him through the shoulder.
   Sean and his men would never be that lucky again. When Ben had pressed the remote trigger, the equivalent of a self-destruct sequence had gone into effect. The first things to go were the primary power sources, the windmills and wave generators. They were issued a kill code that could only be reversed with Ben’s personal security key. Or about two weeks of hacking through the software that controlled the power systems.
   With no power, most of the park’s security measures were disabled. No electric fences, no automated turrets. No computers to unlock the RFID controlled firearms, and no Friend or Foe information grids to allow their use. Then, with whatever power was left in batteries, the electric locks to the holding pens would open. It wouldn’t take long before their inhabitants freed themselves.
   “Let’s see how these military guys cope with a horde of enemies that can only be killed with headshots,” Ben mumbled to himself. “They’ll be out of ammo in no time.”
   He started to laugh, but it quickly turned to wheezing. Ben was tiring alarmingly quickly, far too quickly for simply walking down a concrete tunnel.
   But the most devastating phase of the final solution was the release of the Infectors from their underground prison cells. While the normal form of the Zx virus was  impossible to transmit from one host to another, the Infectors carried the Zxy virus. The Zxy strain was airborne, and would mutate the benign Zx into a contagious strain. After that, it wouldn’t be long before some of the Fireman’s Guard members were bitten.
   The “final solution” was designed to kill everyone on the island. It was modeled after the familiar children’s philosophy: “If I can’t have it, no one can.”
   Ben’s life was leaking out of him along with his blood; he slumped against the wall, too weak to continue. He had to rest or he would never make it off the island in time.
   Ben looked to heaven and said his final words: “God help the tourists.” Then he closed his eyes.


Offline Corycaly

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Re: Original Short Story - Final Solution Zx
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2013, 06:03:31 PM »
Note to all Anthology participants.

I will check files settings for each project, so please send me all your pages!
Contact me by pm so I can give you my email if necessary.

Offline Hasith

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Re: Original Short Story - Final Solution Zx
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2013, 09:14:58 AM »
Looks fine to me but I haven't check grammar and spelling. Let someone to do it and then make the pages and send to Cory.  You have to make 2 sets of pages. Resolution 300 for Printer and 72 for Digital version.

Offline Fyorte

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Re: Original Short Story - Final Solution Zx
« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2014, 03:06:29 PM »
Though I like it as a short story, I'd love to read more of it. =) How the island was first founded, who thought of it, how they get the means to create the creatures to hunt, the different controversy birthed from it and maybe even experience the hunt with some people.
But as a short story, great for reeling in curiosity. Awesome.