Chapter 11: Mark of the Beast by Stephen Simpson

 

Storm Xavier was blowing in from the west at one-hundred and twenty miles per hour. The trees were bending this way and then that way. The racket the wind was creating was ridiculously loud and it was starting to work on Jodie’s nerves. He could not think straight with all the noise.

He pulled his hooded jacket closer to his body. Although there was a heater in the small cubicle, he was sitting in it did not help much against the icy cold wind rocking the box around.

He would rather not be here. He was destined for greater things, and those greater things would not be found sitting in a small box acting as a security guard. It was not as if the facility had a lot of visitors, and he doubted many knew where this place even was, smack in the middle of nowhere Danglen.

He dared to pull his hands from his pockets and blew on his fingertips. They felt numb from the cold. He glanced at the digital clock to the side of the cubicle, next to a bank of screens that displayed several areas of the facility. There was only twenty minutes left of his shift and then he would be able to go back to his barracks and snuggle up in his down-filled sleeping bag. He could not wait.

Sometimes he wondered where his mum and dad were, and begrudgingly he had to admit, sometimes he even wondered where Liam was. He knew by now that they had their barcodes. How could they not? He doubted there were many who were not coded by now. Again, he wished he was one of those out there who were tasked to bring in the dissident individuals who refused to get the barcode. This was the way it was supposed to be, though. He was supposed to be right here. His dreams told him so.

He believed that the only way to set things right in this broken world would be for everybody to get the barcode. How could those people who were fighting against getting it not know this? Even, within himself, he had noticed a change. Since getting the barcode, he did not stress about the little things anymore. He knew the government, and all the leaders of Rheta, only had the best intentions for all the citizens of Rheta. They wanted to make Rheta a better place to live for everyone. Once everybody had the barcode there would be peace. There would be no more terrorism. There would be no more hunger or poverty. The videos that were broadcasted, every morning, and was mandatory to watch, told them so. He believed those messages with all his heart and soul.

Deep down, very deep down, sometimes there was a niggling feeling that he did not, maybe even should not, always believe the things they were telling them, but then it was as if a switch was flicked, and that feeling vanished as a darkness permeated his every cell and thought.

He glanced at the digital clock again. Eighteen minutes to go. James was supposed to relief him tonight and he hoped he was not late as usual. He looked up through the Perspex panels pretending to be glass that surrounded him. The wind was picking up speed and the snow was getting heavier. It was starting to stick.

Storms had names these days, and they were already on X. It did not take long for the storms to work their way through the alphabet since last year, and each storm became worse than the next. The storms created havoc and as soon as the government cleared up the debris from one storm, then the next storm hit.

They were told that once everybody was coded that this would no longer be happening. The government had a plan on how to fix the environment, to fix climate change, and Jodie was hopeful for the future because all his faith was in the leaders of Rheta.

For a second, the dream he had last night flitted through his memories. His dreams had been getting worse since that first dream that he had about the horned creature standing up from out of the ocean on the beach. Since then, he had dreamed about a rider on a white horse who was carrying a bow and looked as if he was kind and only wanted what was good for everyone around him but then that rider turned evil and deceiving. There was a dream of a rider on a horse as red as blood, who caused people to turn against each other, and he remembered vividly how he saw blood running in little streams in the mud caused by the boots of many feet. He dreamed about hordes of people who were so emancipated he could count their ribs as their skin stretched taught over their bones. Their cheek bones stood out so far it made their big, watery eyes sink back into their skulls. His dreams were filled with images of war and famine. He dreamed about earthquakes that moved mountains and islands, and the sun becoming weak, and the full moon becoming red, and the stars falling from the sky.

Every morning when he woke up, he knew these dreams were preparing him for what was to come. It was showing him the pathway to his destiny in tiny episodes. Even though he hated every second that he had to sit in this small cubicle to protect the square, five-storey building behind him, he knew that this was exactly where he had to be. The building was a solid structure and took up an area of 230,000 square feet. That would be as big as 230 five-thousand-square foot houses built side by side and back-to-back.

This building was the data storage bank. It was the most important, most secure building in the entire country, and he was proud that he was chosen to protect it. He knew, also, that a time would come when he had to protect this building with his life. He knew this because his intuition told him so.

He was never allowed to go inside the building, but he knew the vast building had an intricate maze of computers that processed all the human data stored on them. There were hundreds of thousands of servers and cables. Engineers had to use bicycles to get from one end to the other. Very few people were allowed to go into the building because of the sensitive data stored on the computers, and Jodie was only one of a hundred guards protecting the site. From what he had overheard, all the servers were colour coded, and the colour depended on how rich or poor those people were or where they were from.

The wind blew in so hard that it knocked the hoodie from Jodie’s head.

James fell through the door and grabbed hold of the small desk pushed against the wall. “That’s storm’s a howler. We’ll be lucky they don’t find us on the other side of the ocean in Awnroy by the time tomorrow comes.”

He glanced at the digital clock and saw that James was three minutes late. “About time you got here,” he said as he stood up from the swivel chair in front of the small desk.

James warned, “Be careful out there. I thought I was a magician and could levitate a couple of times coming over here.”

Jodie nodded and braced himself as he put his hand on the door handle to push the door open but then stopped and turned to look at James with a confused look on his face, when he said, “Hey, who’s Lydia?”

He looked at the spot where James was tapping his index finger on the wooden desk and saw that while his thoughts were a million miles away, he had carved Lydia’s name on the desk.

Continue reading Chapter 12/17

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