Chapter 62 The Time of Insanity
2303words
"The date and time are shown beneath the images and it shows the drone departed 10 minutes before midnight on the Friday night the spiders would emerge from the drains. So, maybe we will be able to see what happened in the city, Martie."
"Yes, I noticed. I wonder where my granddad sent it."
Billy is becoming quite curious from where he keeps the watch-out. "Hey, I also want to see but the images are too small from here."
Martie tries to pacify him: "I'm downloading all these videos, Billy. I promise you I will show you everything later on my laptop. You're not going to miss anything. Please keep the fort over there."
Billy frowns: "Okay, but I hope it will be later today."
Kadin touches Martie's shoulder: "Look, Martie, it looks as if the drone nears a parking area between a block of flats. Where is it?"
Martie explains: "It seems to me that the drone flew over Mount Pleasant and then over Charlo and has now passed Moffett on Main and over Fairview opposite Overbaakens. It looks like those blocks of flats that were built in close proximity. Many people live there close together. Look at all the cars in the parking area. But I suppose many of the people in that low-income neighborhood don't even have cars. It looks like granddad wanted to see what happened in such a dense area when the spiders emerge."
Wide-eyed Kadin watches anxiously. "All is dead quiet now. Almost all of them are sleeping at this moment. Look, it is almost midnight. I wonder whether all the spiders emerged at once at midnight or was the time only an approximation."
The drone descends and lands on a high wall that encloses the parking area and the camera is pointed at the entrance of the nearest block of flats.
Kadin shares her expectations: "It is now two minutes before midnight. Your granddad has landed it just in time and we shall see shortly whether they will attack immediately. What is the length of the video?"
Carefully Martie pushes a control on the video player. "24 minutes ..."
Silently they sit and wait and when midnight shows, Martie speculates: "If the spiders awoke at midnight they had to creep up from their nests in the sewerage pipes and eventually crawl out of the toilets and slither under the closed doors and attack the sleeping people. This block of flats is so high, so I wonder if they are going to creep to the top? It will probably take some time even if the plague strikes at midnight."
Billy comments: "Remember, they have wings also."
Kadin frowns. "Does the video have sound? Do you think the drone had a microphone? Is the video player's sound switched on?"
Martie checks. "Goodness, no. I forgot to check. It's off." She looks back at Billy. "I am going to put the volume on maximum, Billy, please keep your eyes on the door of the leisure area and warn me in time if my granddad is coming."
Billy nods. "Okay, but promise me I can have a look later today."
Kadin looks at him and nods: "Sure. Don't worry, lovey."
Suddenly the most terrible screams can be heard from the laptop's loudspeaker and the three of them become ice cold. It sounds like people who are assaulted in the flats and their desperate yells increases and becomes a horrifying cacophony of appalling, desperate screams of chaotic disillusionment.
Wide-eyed Kadin points with her finger on the screen: "Look at that!"
Many people run out on their balconies and wrestle with something before they desperately realize the balconies are cul de sacs and then run back into the flats. On the ground floor, people come running out while they wrestle with and hit at something on them. Some of the people on the first floor desperately jump down onto the gardens of the people below injuring themselves severely only to jump up again while they hit and slap at something on their bodies. It now sounds like an insane crowd of people with yelling voices coming out of the flats and people begin to leave the flats in herds and run out onto the parking area only to be followed by a teeming cloud of biting bugs. Wrestling and hitting against the cloud people try to avoid it and bump into each other by accident. Some fall down and those milling around simply trample the unfortunate people, doesn't matter who they are, children or the aged, as long as they can get away from the flying, biting bugs.
More and more people come rushing down insanely and all over the parking area move to and fro chaotically trying to avoid the unrelenting cloud that attacks them continuously. To one's surprise, no people run to their vehicles because there was no opportunity to grab their car keys, they only wanted to get away. They eventually realize that they must leave the flats and all of them start running towards the pole gates at the entrances of the parking area and then through the gates to the outside while the bugs still torment them.
Eventually, the bugs leave them, sure that they have bitten all of them more than once, and they assemble in a teeming cloud before they fly off in a specific direction. The drone lifts and follows. They fly to the brightest lights and descent at the Walmer Park shopping centre. People outside are immediately attacked and some motorists are attacked through their open car windows while the main body flies into the opening of the shopping centre followed by the drone. Suddenly yells echo from different places in the complex.
Billy, who has come nearer, comments: "Look, those things sniffed out the people in the bioscopes and restaurants."
He has scarcely uttered his words when the people come rushing out of the bioscopes and restaurants followed by the biting bugs.
"What is going on here?"
The three of them turned to ice blocks when they hear Johan's voice behind them and only now Kadin and Martie realize that Billy has left his post and is watching the video with them. They were so transfixed on the screen that they forgot everything around them and the professor entered and caught them red-handed.
Johan walks past them and roughly shuts the laptop and jerks Martie's memory stick out. Disappointed he looks down on Martie and despairingly and amazed he asks: "Martie, how did you get into my laptop and what did you see?"
Martie protests: "You hide everything from us. We don't know whatever is going on outside. Are highly contagious man-eating monsters really going to attack us?"
Johan again asks: "What did you see? Leave those things for us adults to worry about. Tomorrow the helicopter will land right in front of our door and we will run out and jump in and they will take us to the safety of the Eastwood Estate where the army will protect us. It is totally unnecessary to expose you to the horror of what is going on outside. It is the army's task to safeguard us and sometimes get provisions until we get the cure. The army will encounter people who, despite everything, have survived and they will bring these healthy looking people with our provisions back to the farm. In quarantine, I will test these people until I find a healthy carrier and we will have to get that person to the scientific team as soon as possible."
Martie frowns. "But Granddad, I don't understand, we have lost all contact with the Saviors and now we are going to the farm run by a terrorist, Colonel Morrison. He is in service of the Elite."
Worried Johan frowns. "Martie, I've told you that you should not believe everything the occult taught you. They call themselves the Saviors but they brought the plague and misery over the whole world, my dear. The only reason I am helping them is that they are also the only hope that we can develop a cure to end the misery and destruction. Colonel Morrison is no terrorist, my darling. He will protect us against the evil world until we get a cure. Martie, I allowed those people to indoctrinate you because I had no choice, but you and I agreed that you will forget all the rubbish they put in your head and that we will together with our new friends turn a fresh leaf? And now you speak of them as the Saviors and of their enemies as the Elite and I explained to you that those concepts were planted in your brain by indoctrination, my sweetie."
"Granddad, the Elite had captured all of us. Through the centuries they have ruled the world and have written its history. They have withheld advanced technology and knowledge from us. They infiltrated and manipulated every facet of society and we were like marionettes and willing, stupid slaves. The Saviors got rid of the Elite and will bring a new society when you have found the cure which will qualify eventually to be part of the truth so that our specie will be allowed to colonize our part of the Milky Way. They are at this stage already preparing for the industry they want to start in the asteroid belt. And then they will construct an anti-matter refinery at Uranus for fuel to take us to the first solar system. They have already obtained permission from the administrators of the Milky Way."
Aghast Kadin and Billy listen to Martie. Earlier she related how clever her friends at the occult are but this is news for them.
Johan is dispirited. "Martie, you promised me you won't speak about these things. Now tell me, how did you get into my laptop?"
Aggressively Martie yells at her granddad as if he is an utter fool. "Dharma, question mark, Granddad. ‘The right move to make, question mark.' You must learn not to use such logical passwords!"
Johan dislikes her aggression and tries to reprimand her: "Martie, behave yourself! Where is your respect, girl?"
Now she yells back: "Granddad, I can't take it anymore! We have been locked up here for how many days and you forbid me to tell anyone anything. I don't care a damn what we have agreed! I am going to spill the bloody beans and they can do what they want with the information."
"My child, my child, you don't understand. It is maybe okay to tell your friends, Billy and Kadin, but the others will think you are mad! They won't understand."
"Michael completely understands. I have told him everything and he is just as excited as I am. He understands why the Saviors brought the plague. It was the only way to save the people from the clutches of the Elite that have controlled the world through centuries. And what about the Elite's evil plans? They had their own viruses that they wanted to unleash even this year to annihilate many of us like animals to reduce us to only one billion humans, in any case. Also, they were going to destroy the current monetary system and replace it within a year or two with a global digital monetary system with which they would be able to totally control us with their one-world communist system by which they would have even further enrich themselves tremendously. Michael is, like I am, worried because he is not sure how the Saviors will contact us should we find a carrier."
Johan shakes his head. "The occult urged me to only concentrate on our mission and, however, we must find a carrier. They assured me that they have everything under control even if it seems otherwise and they will contact us when the time is ripe."
"Granddad, I wish we could have stayed with the Saviors. I was so happy there. They are so interesting and full of surprises. I have learned so much and it was only the beginning."
Kadin now shyly apologizes: "We are sorry, Uncle Johan."
Johan looks from her to Billy who also tries to utter an apology: "Sorry, Uncle. It was wrong of us."
Johan's countenance changes and he smiles at them. "I can't blame you. Martie pulled you in and I feel guilty that the adults had to hide some things from you because you are almost adults. What did you see?
Billy explains: "We only saw the part of the video of the evening the spiders came out at that huge block of flats, Uncle. That's all."
Johan looks relieved. "It is better this way. You don't really want to see what is going on outside. We, adults, get horrible nightmares about the things we had to watch and for what we must prepare so that we are ready if necessary. I hope we can avoid it there in Morrison's army camp and you don't have to see it all."
Kadin nods to show she understands and softly touches Billy's shoulder. She asks: "His back is still tender. I am concerned that the tight combat gear we will have to wear is going to be uncomfortable. A little while ago I rubbed my mother's wonder balm in on his back. Uncle, the helicopter is going to land close by, is it really necessary to wear that gear?"
Johan nods. "It will be the safest because anything can happen and then we must be prepared, for example, and I don't want to be a prophet of doom, but what if the helicopter must make an emergency landing and we land in the wrong place and is left to our own wits?"
