The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE David Moody (the red fox clan txt) 📖

And on the balance of probability, when the whole world except for Australia had already fallen, the chances of the human race being victorious seemed extremely fucking unlikely.

Stu’s instincts were correct.

Other than those that had already managed to squeeze through, there was a vast column of stopped cars lined up behind the Toyota, and a good number of the drivers who were unable to keep moving had got out to see what was going on up ahead. But then, almost as one, they began to turn and look west, back in the direction from which they were trying to escape.

A flock of birds thundered overhead. And thundering was exactly the right word, because at that moment the combined flapping of millions of pairs of wings filled the air. All shapes and sizes, every species, all desperately heading east.

When Stu saw what was coming next, he jumped back into his car and tried to reverse, doing everything he could to disentangle his vehicle from the one he’d collided with. Sherie, his wife, was equally terrified, but it was the lack of knowing that scared her. “What is it, love?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

Stu could barely spit out individual words. Whole sentences were out of the question. “Back there…I just…we don’t…”

“What did you see, love?”

Only one word was needed now.

“Blood.”

A glistening tsunami of filth and gore several miles high had reared up off the coast near Perth. Its incoming force was such that the ground shook and the line of stationary vehicles rattled where they stood. Stu revved the Toyota’s engine angrily, but it didn’t make any difference. The incoming wave could still be felt and heard over and above the racket of his motor. He shoved his foot down on the accelerator harder and harder, succeeding only in shunting the car he’d already hit. By now he could see the Bleed in the rear view: nothing but red in every direction.

There were thousands of people on that road, and they were all wiped out in a heartbeat. As if they hadn’t suffered enough, as they were each assimilated by the toxic sludge, their component parts combined and spliced and twisted and re-spliced. All those individuals fused together into a new whole. The vehicles and their passengers and the last of the kangaroos formed a snaking, serpent-like thing, many miles long. It rose up from the deep and bloody slurry that now covered this part of the earth, then dove back into the depths and swam away to feed.

Those people who’d been on the new perimeter of the orb when its size had been suddenly reduced fared little better. The new dimensions of the forcefield were decided at speed by the god-tech. Many people were saved. Many more were lost. Some were stuck in-between.

Where the new battle line had been drawn, people were killed indiscriminately. Anyone unfortunate enough to in the wrong spot when the forcefield was rebuilt bore the full brunt of its power. Around its entire circumference, wherever it struck land, people were literally sliced in two by the invisible wall. There was no warning about where it would appear, just a sudden and instantaneous materialization.

An arc sliced through the heavily populated northern districts of Brisbane, and there, more than anywhere else, the impact of the orb’s repositioning were felt. Not far from the state school in Strathpine, Valerie Henderson had just stepped out into the street to try to see why the shockwaves had stopped when the forcefield drove a transparent wall through the middle of her yard. Now she was on the outside and her kids were inside. They stood on the front porch and yelled for their mummy to come back into the house, but she couldn’t, and she never would again. Val was meters away from her kids. It might as well have been hundreds of miles.

Where the Bleed had been held back by the orb, the pressure had built to astonishing levels. And when that pressure was released by the repositioning of the forcefield, the blood gushed.

Great floods of gore were released right around the circumference of the orb, the waves destroying everything in their path. And this time, there was nothing to stop them other than a small and relatively insignificant bubble with a circumference of only four hundred miles. Everything else was dead. Everything else was absorbed by the Bleed.

The force of the waves was such that even when they reached the orb, this time they didn’t stop. Given its perfectly spherical structure and the fact that half of it was buried underground, the forcefield’s height had been reduced by exactly the same amount as its width. The waves crashed over it as well as around it, and the orb was almost completely submerged. Blood lapped against its glass-like sides. Everything was plunged into ruddy darkness when waves crashed over the top, but the god-tech had anticipated that, and the clockwork room provided illumination. Even that light was now tinged with mutating reds and oranges, like a never-ending sunset, the dying of the last ever day.

Inside the orb, it was clearer than ever that its source was the random hotel in Surfers Paradise. Desperate to stay alive, people fought with each other again to get closer to it. Riots broke out and then took hold. Chaos ensued. Order collapsed. The last vestiges of civilization began to fall apart.

The world belonged to the Bleed.

Maddie and Jenny stood side-by-side and tried to come to terms with what they’d just done. They hadn’t had any choice, of course, and neither of them regretted taking action, but the cost had been far higher than either of them had expected.

“Every decision has consequences,” Jenny said.

“You’re right.”

“Doing nothing is never an option.”

“Correct again. We’ve lost a lot of people, but if we hadn’t done it, they’d all be dead now.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better. Jesus, Maddie, there’s so much pressure on everything we do now.”

“Yeah,