Project Apex by Michael Bray Read Free Book Online

passed yet he didn't pause, nor did they stop watching him. When it was done he climbed out of the hole and admired his work. Six feet deep by four feet wide. It would be more than adequate. He handed the shovel back to one of his silent observers, and then looked at each in turn.
    "When I return, I shall be a new man," he said, breath fogging in the chilly night air.
    They didn't respond, and only watched and waited for what was to come.
    The man dragged his coffin to the hole, struggling to position it so it would land upright at the bottom. Again, no help came, just as he had instructed. With a last effort, he slid the coffin over the edge of the grave. It landed where he intended, its pale pink lining resembling the tongue of some kind of slumbering beast as it waited for him in the dark.
    "Are you ready, Joshua?" the man with the shovel said. Joshua looked down into the hole without fear. He nodded. "When I come back to you, I will be a new man. I will have proved my worth."
    "Are you sure you will rise again?" the man with the shovel said, his eyes shining like twin beacons in the gloom.
    Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. "I do this to show you my commitment to our cause. I enter the earth as your brother, and I will rise again as the father of the new world."
    "When will you be back to us?"
    Joshua considered the question, tongue flicking against the back of his teeth as he thought. "When the two of you become twelve in number, dig me out."
    "How will they find us? The rest of our kind?"
    "You have to believe they will, my brother," Joshua said. He looked at both men in turn and then clambered down into the hole.
    "Remember, pack the earth tight," he said as he lay down in the coffin, taking a moment to get comfortable. “Pass down the lid."
    The men responded at once, kneeling in the dirt and lowering the lid. Joshua took its weight and paused, staring up at the two men and the slab of sky above him.
    "When I return, we give birth to the new world."
    "Until then, we will wait for you here." The man with the shovel said.
    Joshua nodded and lowered the lid into place. The two men began to fill the hole, neither speaking to the other as they worked into the night. When it was done, they knelt, surrounded by the dense forest.
    They waited.
     
    III
     
    The meeting room was dominated by a large oak table. On the back wall, a large TV screen surrounded by smaller monitors allowed presentations or live video feeds to be played as needed. Marcus looked at them, recalling what happened before then forced those ghosts back down into the place he kept them. He took his seat and waited for somebody to fill him in. There was a strange atmosphere in the room, a palpable nervousness which he supposed was directly linked to the increase in threat level. Even so, it was unusual for him to be out of the loop and he was feeling more than a little frustrated. He caught Susan Fring’s eye across the table and was rewarded with a disgusted curl of the lip before she lowered her eyes and pretended to look at her phone.
    Bitch.
    As Mike had warned him, other than Josh Harding - a nice guy who worked in the White House with the secretary of defence- he didn’t recognise anyone else. A man who looked to be aged anything between fifty and three hundred was standing at the end of the room reviewing a mountain of papers spread out over the desk. He was bald, and his pale skin had an ugly translucent quality giving the observer a sneak preview of the network of blood vessels and veins which lay underneath. His eyes were ringed in bluish purple, showing the distinct signs of a man who was suffering from a lack of sleep, a look enhanced by the white stubble which lined his gaunt cheeks. He reminded Marcus of some kind of zombie - the dead come to life and standing in a cheap suit at the head of the table. Marcus suppressed a small smile at the thought. Only the man's eyes showed any semblance of being alive and stared out from underneath bushy