The Human Xenocide

Chapter Forty-Two - It's all in the Transcript

But for whatever reason Redeme kept their heart bombs a close guarded secret.  The world learned that explosives were the ultimate weakness of the ghouls—but found the ghouls would easily avoid bombs, landmines, and manual suicide bombers.  No one quite knew what made the Redeme heart bomb so effective.  Was it the reverse fuse, a fuse that went off when electricity stopped flowing? Was it because of its pin size, making it so hard to detect?  Was it the chemical explosion instead of heat explosion that caused so much devastation?  It was hard to say, and even if someone else figured out what made it so effective the technology to make it work could take months for another science group to put together, months they may not have.

On the thirty-sixth day from Lilly’s disappearance a declaration came out of the now relatively safe Redeme borders.  It stated simply, “This is a declaration to the world and all remaining governments standing.  We have the one and only weapon that can be used against the oncoming doom. We have manufactured this weapon in the quantities of the tens of thousands and are ready to distribute it against the hoards of the undead.  We have one condition for being your savior, for preventing the inevitable doom to fall upon you. 

“We ask for your land, your people, and your government.  You want us to save you?  We only save our own kind.  Cede into Redeme, become part of our great nation and we’ll save you.  If you chose to decline, if you refuse our generous offer to hold back the waves of undead then so be it.  We will let you rot, let you be slaughtered day-by-day until there is not a single inhabitant left in your land, then we will simply walk in and take your territories for ourselves anyways.

“This is our ultimatum.  Take it or leave it, your choice now rests in the hands of your leaders, if any are even left.  Life under the Redeme rule or extinction.  –Redeme Directive 38 signed by the council of thirty-one.”

Twelve hours after the notice was issued Lucas from Falu signed into it.  A day after that airplanes were over most of North America and Redeme surgeons began installing heart bombs on volunteers.  At first no one was expected to sign the declaration, what government in its right mind would just give up everything then use its own soldiers as bombs?  But then Falu wasn’t some old society bound on maintaining ultimate control, no it was a fairly new order created only two months ago with its survival already in question.  This merger with Redeme was more a protest to take the old regime further away from ever gaining control back than some humiliating surrender.  But there was more to it that just that, there was something behind the scenes that Thomas just couldn’t pick out.  Was this merger planned?  It was odd two revolutions happened in close succession, Redeme peaceful and expected, Falu abrupt and violent—and both quickly found common grounds to merge into an even larger superpower.

World news was all that kept Thomas and Sin sane these days—every little move for world power Sin thought Lilly was somehow behind it, so when Redeme’s declaration came out and Falu quickly joined his mood brightened, but only slightly—her pain was still always there.  Several more countries ceded into Redeme follow Falu, nothing major but enough to keep the Redeme doctors and shipments busy, but after the initial mergers the world went silent.  Most refused to simply give up everything to Redeme, leaders had demands, questions, resolutions. 

So a date was set, two weeks from Falu’s surrender, to have a world convention.  This convention would be held in Redeme, but at a secret location.  No one except those who were attending would know about it.  This is where every remaining world leader would meet up to discuss surrender terms and the survivability of the human race in general.

Sin and Thomas never left their hideout in the two weeks leading up to the convention.  It was the morning of the meeting, well, middle of the night for Thomas and Sin, when something odd happened.  Tom got a hit on his first alert, it wasn’t a direct sighting but more a mention on a monitored line—Tom didn’t get into detail about how the line ended up tapped or who was tracking it—but it was someone well known in their neck of the woods—Lucas.