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Afternoon, Friday, April 29
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The Flotilla, 150 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA
“We need a goddamned land base!” General Rose thundered to a hapless Captain Mays.
“I understand, sir.”
“We’re sure Hawaii is a wash?” The captain rifled through a pile of papers on his desk. They’d finished moving onto his new command ship, the former Pacific Adventurer, now USS Pacific Adventurer. She’d been found abandoned nearby two days ago. Navy engineers did a quick once-over and pronounced her sea worthy, at which point General Rose had commandeered it. No one had complained. She was a 330-foot-long ship weighing in at just over 4,000 tons. According to the books, she could handle 1,000 guests, with a crew of 300. Rose had arrived at the flotilla with 233 military personnel from the hasty evacuation of Ft. Hood, and another 801 civilians. He took the Pacific Adventurer as his military vessel, and a civilian cruise ship (currently unable to make way under its own power) was serving as home for the civilians. She was sitting nearby with a sea anchor holding her relatively stable.
The Adventurer had several advantages. Multiple Zodiac boat decks, a helipad (currently home to one of his Apache gunships), and her larders were full, adding to the mystery of why she was abandoned and adrift. His provisions experts had just finishing going through the ship’s stores and found that 95% of it had been dated from before the crisis. The rest was going over the side. She’d even had full fuel bunkers, with a range of over 2,500 nautical miles. The last of their weapons and gear were being lashed to a former sundeck. It was crowded but suited him. Better than being a 5th wheel on a damned Navy ship. The admiral had been kind enough to loan him a nine-man skeleton crew to operate the vessel, headed up by a pimple-faced twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant, Junior Grade by the name of Sampson. He seemed to enjoy being called Captain Sampson.
Captain Mays finally found the report. His desk was in the far corner of the general’s command office, what had been the ship’s captain’s cabin, just aft of the bridge. There was a small ‘guest room’ in the rear that he now used as his quarters. The captain shared a bunk with another officer one deck down. Sampson hadn’t complained. If the other ships Rose had seen were any indication, it was still a step up.
“The Navy sent a recon flight this morning. They’ve just gotten confirmation that no organized military presence exists on the islands. Intel believes that the large amount of fresh fish consumed on the island made it a worst-case scenario. One of the airfields at Pearl is still being held, but the Navy is going to evacuate it this afternoon.”
“There have to be other islands,” Rose growled. Mays looked pained but just shrugged. He knew his boss wasn’t mad at him personally; he just hated no-win situations.
“There are,” Mays agreed. “But we don’t know where they are, and the Navy is too busy to help us.”
Rose grunted, turned in his office chair, and looked out the cabin’s window. He missed his huge office in Ft. Hood, but this one had its advantages. One was that an entire wall, about 10 feet of it, was a single massive pane of glass. Usually, all he saw was the multitude of ships that made up the flotilla. This time there were only a few ships bobbing at anchor, and all were smaller private ships. Of course, no sooner had he begun to enjoy the scene than a military ship sailed slowly into view. A white pointy bow with a red diagonal stripe followed by a superstructure and a single small deck gun. Coast Guard, he thought. That must be the Boutwell, the ship that had been here since the beginning. His thought process stopped in midstream. Coast Guard.
“Thomas?”
“General?”
“What’s the name of the young ensign in charge of that ship?” he asked and pointed out the window. His aide turned and looked.
“Lieutenant, sir,” he reminded him, “Lieutenant, Junior Grade Grange.”
“Get her on the horn and see if she has time.” He got himself to his feet with a grunt; his back was hurting again. “I’m heading for the boat deck for one of those Zodiac things. Shouldn’t be hard to catch up with her.” Outside, the full length of the Boutwell was now in sight. A thick cable trailed from its stern where the propellers were throwing up a huge spray, and the nose of a massive freighter was just coming into view. “Tell her I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
General Rose found several of his non-coms working on one of the Zodiacs and caught them completely off guard. He was practically in their midst when a staff sergeant realized it was the old man.
“Atten-shun!” the older non-com barked. The half dozen men instantly snapped to embarrassed attention.
“At ease,” Rose barked. “Any of you know how to drive one of these?” he asked, gesturing to the four inflatable boats tied to the side of the ship.
“I do, sir,” a private in his twenties answered right away.
“What’s your name, son?”
“PFC Trey Gordon, sir!”
“Okay, PFC Gordon,” Rose said and pointed at the Coast Guard cutter now slowly pulling away with its huge burden. “Take me over to that boat.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Private,” the staff sergeant said with a dubious look on his face, “you sure you can take care of the general?”
“Absolutely, sir. I’ve been driving boats since I was five!” The staff sergeant chewed his lip then turned to a corporal.
“Hagger, go with the general and the PFC.”
“That’s not necessary, sergeant,” the general said with a shake of his head. “Just going for a little trip.”
“Afraid I must insist, General. There are too many uncertainties around here, and you’re the only command staff we have.”
The general was about to complain further, then relented. He hadn’t gotten as far as he had by ignoring a sergeant’s wisdom. The PFC and the corporal manhandled the inflatable boat into position. The PFC adjusted the controls for a minute, then, with a surprisingly loud roar, the big 150-horsepower Mercury outboard came to life. Grey smoke billowed away from it, and water spurted out the back.
“Sure this is safe, PFC?”
“Oh, absolutely sir. The Zodiac has three separate flotation zones, which are made from treated rubber. They’re almost impossible to sink.”
“You better hope so,” he said as he not-so-gracefully got aboard. The younger man looked concerned and swallowed. Good, a little fear was a fine motivator for a kid his age. In a minute, the PFC was behind the boat’s steering wheel, while the general and corporal were seated. The staff sergeant handed the corporal an M4 carbine, which the man checked and then stood on its butt stock between his legs, barrel pointed up.
“Everyone ready?” the corporal asked. The other two men indicated they were, and the boat took off like a missile.
“Holy shit!” The general gulped; it reminded him of the time an Air Force general had talked him into riding in a goddamned F-15. In seconds they were going at least 40 miles per hour. “Do you have to go this fast?” he yelled over the racing motor.
“Better to skim over the waves than crash into them,” said PFC Gordon. He looked and saw some of the waves were a couple feet tall. They did indeed seem to just be blasting through most of them and riding between others. Still, the shit-eating grin on the young soldier’s face left Rose wondering just how much of that was true.
The cutter was now almost a mile away as they took off after it. The PFC quickly caught up to the rear of the freighter, which was on a long cable behind the cutter. The pair of ships were going maybe five knots. The PFC changed course slightly to go around the freighter, which proved to be a lucky move.
“Heads up!” Corporal Hagger barked. An instant later something crashed into the water just feet to their right, between the racing Zodiac and the freighter. Another explosion of water and spray doused everyone on the boat. The general looked up, his eyes wide in shock.
“Holy fucking Jesus shit!” the general bellowed and unconsciously leaned away from the freighter’s deck. High above them were dozens of the ship’s former crew. Many were laying on or under the railing, howling and reaching toward them. Others were busy climbing the railing to jump toward the Zodiac far below.
“Get away from the damned freighter!” Corporal Hagger yelled and brought his M4 up to his shoulder. “Firing!” The general hunched over between his own legs and covered his ears just as the corporal began firing single shots. As the PFC changed course, the general heard more bodies hitting the water. Gratefully, these were increasingly further away. After a brief time, they were too far from the freighter for even the craziest infected to make a leap. Though, as the general watched, one who’d been on the observation wing just off the bridge leaned over to see them, backed up, and made a running leap. He’d been much higher off the water than the others. When he hit the ocean’s surface, still a good 20 feet short, it was face-first with a sickening slap. The general craned his head backward to see the body float back to the surface.
“They’re bat-shit crazy,” he said. The corporal safed his rifle and yelled at the PFC. “Stay well clear as we pass the bow.”
“Yes, Corporal.” The zombie high-dive act had taken some of the wind out of the kid’s sails.
It only took another minute to pull alongside the cutter, where several Coast Guard sailors were waiting. They’d tossed a huge cargo net over the side, and it was swirling along in the wake.
“You have got to be kidding me,” General Rose said, then cupped his hands to yell at the crew above. “Can’t you stop?”
“Not while towing,” the oldest of the men yelled back down, “it’s tricky to let something that big go slack on us.”
Rose turned to the PFC. “Get me over there, son.” The young man looked dubious, but when a general says he wants to do something, even if it seems like a poor idea, you do it.
It turned out to be easier than any of them had thought. The cutter, despite the efforts its engines were putting out, was only moving at a few miles per hour (knots, the general reminded himself), so even as they bumped up against the side, it wasn’t very hard. The general grabbed the big knotted rope net and started climbing. He hadn’t done anything like this since basic training, going on forty years ago. The corporal had slung his carbine and was right behind him. What did he think? That he could catch all 220 pounds of the general if he fell?
By the time he reached the railing and four pairs of hands grabbed him, the general’s arms were shaking with fatigue, and he was almost soaked from the salt spray. The corporal reached the deck a moment later, looking far better off for the climb.
“I guess I ask for permission to come aboard?” the general asked, surveying the unfamiliar rank insignia. All four men and one woman saluted.
“Permission granted,” the oldest man among them replied, dropping his salute after the general returned it. “I’m Senior Chief Petty Officer Howell, sir. You can just call me ‘Senior Chief,’ if you want, sir. I’m ranking NCO on the Boutwell.”
“Senior Chief,” the general said and offered his hand. “Lieutenant General Rose, III Corps.” It was a warm, strong shake.
“Pleased to meet you, sir. Sorry about the climb.” The general grunted and waved it off. He glanced over the side and saw that the PFC had tied off on the net and was just riding alongside, presumably waiting for the general to climb down after his meeting. To hell with that, he thought, then shrugged.
“Where’s your captain, Senior Chief?”
“She’s on the bridge, sir. Pulling that beast is a handful. Follow me please?”
The senior chief took him through a hatchway on the side of the superstructure and they climbed up several decks via ladders that made the ones on the carriers look like superhighways. The general quickly wondered if there was a weight restriction for the Coast Guard. He’d put on a few pounds, hard not to commanding a desk at 60 years old, and each hatchway made him slow and angle himself. The chief before him seemed to flow up the ladders. It was like watching a cat go up the stairs.
Finally, instead of going up, they went forward and into the bright light again. The Boutwell’s bridge had excellent visibility. Heavy four-feet-by-four feet armored glass panes were bolted into the steel bulkheads in a slight forward curve, then angled backward to catwalks on either side. Rose could see a huge portion of the flotilla out there, including three of the supercarriers and one of the Marine’s little amphibious carriers. It was easy to spot because it was so much lower to the water and was alive with helicopters coming and going. The Marines were in it up to their necks trying to maintain security on the flotilla. There was an outbreak every few hours. The civilians weren’t keeping to the food and water discipline worth a shit.
“General on the bridge,” someone called, and everyone in the space came to attention at their stations, but he noted with an appraising eye that none of them took their hands away from instruments to salute. In the center of the bridge was a padded chair like a bar stool, high enough to see over the control consoles before it. The woman who’d been sitting there turned to look at him. She looked to be in her mid-20’s, attractive, wearing the blue/green camo the Coast Guard often used on duty. She had her black hair in a short ponytail that poked out from under the blue ball cap with the ship’s name and number embroidered on it.
“At ease,” the general said and saluted the ship’s master. “Lieutenant General Rose,” he said.
“Captain Grange, USCGC Boutwell,” she said and held out a hand, but didn’t leave her station either. The general took a few steps and shook it. “Welcome aboard, sir.”
“Captain? I thought my aide said you were a Lieutenant, JG?” She smiled with that smile you have for someone from a different armed service who didn’t know the rules.
“That’s my official rank, sir,” she said and indicated her single silver bar on her epaulets. “However, the officer in command of a ship assumes the title of ‘Captain,’ regardless of their rank. The old skipper was a lieutenant commander and wore what you would recognize as a major’s oak leaf.” The general chuckled and shook his head.
“Slight drift to starboard,” one of the bridge crew said.
“We have a mega yacht out of position,” another said, “five degrees off the port beam.”
“Sound the horn,” Grange said, and the ship’s horn blew a long note. “Comms, get whoever is conning that pleasure palace on the horn and tell them to get out of the way, or I’ll just let that scow behind us run them down.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“General, I’m sorry I can’t offer you some coffee in the ward room, but as you can see I’m busy playing bumper cars with Commander Adama’s rag-tag fleet here.” The general cocked his head slightly, and she grinned again. “Inside joke, sorry. What can I do for you, sir?”
“What exactly are you up to now?” he asked first.
“Admiral Tomlinson has us on replenishment detail. Finding chow for the flotilla, mostly.” The general nodded toward the ship they were towing.
“And all the crazy fuckers on that ship?”
“The Marines will deal with that,” she said, “though I hear you capped a few of them when they tried to bonsai onto your boat.” He grunted and smiled a little. “We might have to try something like that to reduce their numbers. But you wouldn’t be here if you just wanted to know that, right?”
The general nodded and took hold of a railing to keep from over-compensating for the ship’s swells as he described the situation, both tactical and logistical. It took him a few minutes, during which time he was interrupted twice. Once with an update from the engine room on how the power plant was handling the towing duty, and again from comms to say the yacht was moving out of the way. When he’d finished, the captain nodded in understanding.
“I see your point, General. We can’t hide on the water indefinitely.” Outside, a Marine helicopter shot past, low to the water and its passenger area stuffed with soldiers all carrying weapons. “Too many issues, not the least of which keeping everyone fed.”
“And above the surface,” Rose added. She grunted in agreement.
“So, what can the Coast Guard do for you, sir? Not that there are many of us Coasties left, mind you.”
“We need an island.” The young officer lifted an eyebrow in curiosity.
* * *
Andrew almost lost a chunk of shin as he barely hurdled the last knee-knocker coming out onto the deck of the Gerald R. Ford. The call over the 1MC public address system had said a single engine prop plane was coming in for a landing. As the only non-naval aviator on the carrier at the time, he was racing up to see what he could do to help. As he cleared the doorway, dodging sideways to avoid a pair of men in bright red jackets racing toward the landing area, he heard a surprisingly familiar engine sound.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said as he scanned the sky and quickly found the distinctive high-wing design of a Piper Cub lining up on the deck. He’d run like a lunatic for nothing. But just as he breathed a sigh of relief, he saw the deck crew beginning to raise the crash barricade. “Hey!” he yelled at the nearest red-dressed man, “what the hell are you doing?!”
“Orders,” the man replied.
“Who?” Andrew asked. The man pointed, and he ran back inside and up the stairs.
Andrew reached primary flight control, or Pri-Fly, as the Cub was lined up and slowing for approach. He pushed the door open without announcing himself and almost yelled.
“Drop the safety barrier!”
The Mini Boss spun around. “What are you doing here?”
“Sir!” Andrew exclaimed. “You’re about to waste that Cub.”
“Mister, we have about half our flight deck left. We tried to wave this guy off, but he wouldn’t go. I guess he figured since there’s a damn C-17 here, there’s room for more! So, if you don’t want him ramming that big bird in the ass—”
“Will you listen to me?” The Mini Boss’s eyes narrowed dangerously, but he let Andrew go on. “That guy flying the Cub knows what he’s doing to get it this far out here, and to survive with it in the first place. And, if you know what you’re doing, and I’m betting he does, you can land one of those in just a few hundred feet! If you put up the safety barrier, you’ll ruin the plane and possibly kill the pilot and passengers.”
The Mini Boss turned and looked at the approaching plane, grabbed a pair of binoculars and examined it. It almost seemed to be hanging still without moving. It was going very, very slow. The man chewed his lip.
“You sure about this?”
“Damned sure,” Andrew said.
“Then it’s on you,” the Mini Boss said and pressed the talk button. “On the flight deck, stow the barricade. I say again, stow the barricade.” Andrew could see them all look up at Pri-Fly with a look of consternation, then rush to do as ordered. Once the net went down, the Cub immediately began to move forward a little more quickly. Andrew nodded to himself; the pilot had been worried about the net.
It only took the crews a minute to stow the barricade, then the Piper Cub came cruising in like a car pulling into a drive-thru for a burger. Its huge balloon tires touched down with the tiniest of bumps, and the plane rolled to stop in less than 100 feet, leaving the supercarrier’s deck crew staring in shocked amazement.
“Told you,” Andrew said.
“Get the fuck out of my Pri-Fly,” the Mini Boss said, but there was humor in his voice.
Andrew ran back out of the island and onto the flight deck just as the deck hands were trying to figure out what to do with the plane. One of the fabric doors was locked open against the underside of the left wing and a man, who looked to be at least 70, was sitting half-out of the plane, arguing with one of the flight directors.
“Those other boats looked like they’d been beat to shit, son!” he was yelling over the sound of a helicopter spinning up not far away. “Then you went and put that damned net up, I liked to have had me a heart attack!” While he was talking, a trio of medical staff was examining him and helping his passengers out. The Cub was essentially a two-seater, but the elderly pilot had managed to stuff two adults and three young children in the back.
“I understand sir. We can’t promise anything about the plane, though. We don’t have room.” The older man cast a glance at the massive C-17 on the nose of the flight deck, wings hanging out dozens of feet over each side, then cocked an eyebrow back at the young officer.
“Sonny, if you can give my granddaughter and her family a place to stay, you can shove the bird into the drink, and I won’t feel sorry at all. It got us here alive.”
“Hell of a job, sir,” Andrew said as he approached. The older man eyed Andrew’s flight suit and lifted an eyebrow again.
“Lieutenant Tobin, is it? Well the last thing I expected to see on a flattop was a fellow Air Force flyer.”
“You’re Air Force too, sir?”
“You betcha, I few Douglas A-1s in Nam for AFSOC, mainly SAR missions.” Andrew nodded, his respect for the pilot growing considerably. Air Forces Special Operations Command, AFSOC, were all top-notch pilots. They were often minimally armed to extend their range in the search and rescue, SAR, of downed pilots. “Whatcha fly, son?”
“Used to fly F-35s mostly. My last job was that,” he said and hooked a thumb at the C-17.
“You don’t say?” the old guy said, giving Andrew a narrow-eyed appraisal. “That must have been some seriously steely-eyed flying, son.”
“I had a lot of help from the carrier.” He turned to the flight officer. “Can you tie this thing up under the C-17’s wing?”
“I don’t see why not,” the officer said, “but I’ll need to check with the skipper.”
“Let him know I’d like to keep it around. Considering what you’ve just seen of the flight characteristics, I bet you can understand why.” The man nodded and used his radio to call the senior command staff. “Sir,” Andrew said to the elderly pilot, “do you mind if I use this bird? I’d need you to teach me to fly her, of course.”
“Son, if you landed that flying whale on this postage stamp, I doubt there’s a damned thing about flying I can teach you.” The old flyer put out a hand. Andrew laughed and shook his hand. “Name’s Teddy, Teddy Kennedy.”
“Good to meet you. Let’s get your family settled in, and I’ll buy you a drink. One zoomie to another.” Andrew watched as Teddy was led below decks with his family by several deck hands, then he noticed something. About a mile away, a dozen ships had converged on two of the carriers. It was too far to tell, but he guessed it was the Carl Vinson and the George Washington. Both carriers were nearly worthless now for flight ops. The GW even had damage to its island, and the Carl Vinson had suffered a fire below decks.
There were at least a dozen ships around the carriers, several with cranes, and hundreds of lights illuminated the entire area. “What the hell is going on?” he wondered before heading below deck himself.
* * *
Near Tarpley, TX
The house and grounds looked like a swarm of African driver ants had been over it, and then elephants had trampled what was left. The former high-end synthetic wood siding was stripped in many places, revealing the extra-heavy wooden sheeting underneath. In a few places, you could even see Kevlar. Armored windows were cracked, door handles and railings were gone, ornamental flowers were ground into pulp, and the front porch sagged because two of the four supports were broken. An aluminum building nearby, which had once held gardening tools and a lawn tractor, was in utter ruin.
Watching the house and grounds for a time, you’d think there was no one alive, nor anyone who had been for many years. But that was not the case. If you watched for a few more minutes, you’d have noticed movement in a few secluded places, out of the hot Texas sun. A few of the infected were under the only remaining upright wall of the garden shed, a few in the carport with the obviously wrecked Jeep, and more in the garage. It looked like a couple were sleeping in Tim’s truck, still parked on the driveway. On the second-floor balcony, three of them were crouched, ripping pieces of flesh from one of their own and hungrily devouring them.
The monsters were down to squabbling over the last significant pieces of flesh, and they were so busy with their dining experience, they didn’t hear the lock to the balcony door release, or the heavy shutter-bolt slide back. The shatterproof heavy-duty doors slowly began to swing inward, inch-by-inch, until the opening was half a foot wide. It was just enough to allow a view of all three creatures. A black barrel slid out of the space. It was a wide shaft, thick, though the barrel itself was only .22 of an inch wide.
Phut! the gun spoke. It barely recoiled at all, and one of the three fell with a tiny hole through its forehead. The other two stopped, mouths dripping blood and bits of flesh, looking at their fallen cohort. One of the two, a woman, growled. The gun spoke again, phut! and her left eye exploded. She fell to the filthy deck and spasmed. The last one made the association within his altered and strangely functioning mind and spun to the door.
Vance Cartwright steadied his grip as the last snarled at him through the gap. Just as the former human began to move toward Vance, he stroked the trigger, and the suppressed Ruger Mk III clacked, sending the subsonic round through the infected’s nasal passage and its brain. The man jerked as the light hollow point expanded in his brain and cracked against the back of his skull, but enough brain was left in the parts it was using to continue moving, so Vance fired twice more. The man fell face first onto the porch, were his blood continued to pump out for quite some time. Vance let his breath out with a shuddering wheeze.
“Good shooting,” Harry Ross said. From the big former Marine, that was high praise. “Good thing you had that suppressed .22 in storage.”
“Only wish I’d had more,” Vance admitted. “But at $200 each for the tax stamp on the suppressors alone, they were just too damned expensive.”
Harry held the door and watched as Vance stepped out on the porch, swinging the muzzle of the .22 around to cover all angles. The remains of the zombies’ meal made his stomach churn. It was a butcher’s shop after closing, or a scene from a vampire movie.
“We better get them off the porch,” Tim Price said behind them. He held an AR-15 SBR, or short barreled rifle. A thirty-round magazine was loaded and ready, just in case.
“Agreed,” Vance said and spoke into the boom mic he wore. “Balcony team to the bunker.”
“Go ahead team.” The voice was more than a little nervous. Ann Benedict, Vance’s wife, was in the bunker under the house with the other two women. She knew if anything went wrong up on the balcony, they were in just as much danger.
“We got them cleared,” Vance said.
“Oh, thank God.”
“We’re going to get the bodies over the side and be right down.” Tim opened a duffle bag and removed a Ziploc full of gear. There were elbow-length nitrile gloves, face masks, and a container full of alcohol-based wipes.
A few minutes later the three bodies rolled over the side, one after another, as Tim kept overwatch and used his own gloved hands to pitch bits of bone and a skull over the side. When the last body hit, it landed on a broken railing from the porch, launching it into the side of the house with a crash.
“Graunch!” a voice yelled, and everyone looked. From under one wall of the defunct garden shed, two infected stood up.
“Shit,” Vance said, sliding the gloves off and drawing the suppressed Ruger. He’d fired thousands of rounds from the weapon over the years. The ammo was a favorite for target practice. Vance reloaded the weapon with another mag and took careful aim. It was about 40 yards. He’d switched from the sub-sonic to standard.
“Tight shot at this range,” Harry said as Vance dropped into a Weaver stance and sighted.
“The advantage is, I don’t have to do quick kills,” he said and fired. With the standard ammo, the gun was louder, though still considerably less than an unsuppressed weapon. More like a cough than a grunt. Vance shot the first one three times, all non-lethal hits in his abdomen and leg. He shifted his aim to the man standing next to him. This one had begun to jog toward the house. He shot him three times as well, though had to fire five times to accomplish it. Two of those rounds hit him in the chest, the last one punched through the top of his skull, and he dropped in his tracks.
“What about him?” Tim asked and pointed at the first one. The guy staggered for a few feet and resumed walking toward the house. Blood flowed from his wounds, but he kept coming.
“Look at the amount of blood,” Harry said. “He won’t last long.”
“Just going to let him bleed out?” Tim asked. Vance just shrugged.
“Let’s go,” he said and turned to leave.
They were back in the bunker a few minutes later, locking the heavy metal doors behind them. Ann nearly leapt into his arms, looking him over to be sure he wasn’t hurt.
“Why do you keep doing that?” she demanded after giving him several kisses.
“Because if we don’t keep them down, they’ll do more damage until they eventually gain entrance,” he explained.
“Maybe seal an air vent,” Harry added.
“Get on the roof,” Tim agreed. “They’d tear some antennas down or something then. That’d be a worst-case scenario.” None of them wanted to think about losing their only remaining lifeline to the outside world, even if it was just barely functioning. The internet lines were buried, so Vance knew they had a connection, but the internet wasn’t working. The kill switch, long a legend among preppers, had turned out to be true.
The command center of the bunker, a wall of LED TV monitors displaying views from all over the property, was largely dark. Fully half of the screens were blank, having been shut off because their cameras no longer functioned, or their lines had been cut. Vance had turned each one off when the signal was lost to conserve power. So far, the solar panels on the roof continued to work well and provided sufficient power, and it was hard to believe only four days had passed since the swarm of infected had flooded over the property like a tsunami cresting over a breakwater.
“It’s just so dangerous,” Ann said and walked toward the single restroom. She was in there a lot, and that made Vance remember she was pregnant with his baby. He’d only found out a short time before the Delta plague had begun, and they’d tried to hunker down against it. No one had thought it would spread as fast as it did. No one had thought it would affect people the way it did. Especially how the infected would group together into swarms like army ants.
“Where were they going?” Belinda Ross asked. She was Harry’s wife; the two had shown up with Tim and Nicole Price when the pair arrived at the retreat they’d helped build. The Rosses weren’t part of that partnership. They’d been friends with the Prices, and when things went sideways, they’d been invited. The Rosses had brought guns, supplies, and skills. Tim was a retired US Marine Corps Force Recon soldier, and Belinda was a trauma nurse. The working monitors had recorded the swarm as it arrived from Mexico and flowed north. “What do they want?”
“If what we keep finding is any indication, food,” Vance said. “They are like locusts.” Everyone nodded. They’d watched what’d happened during the main wave’s passage when the shed collapsed. It had contained cases of old freeze-dried foods. The infected didn’t show much intelligence. However, they could solve problems or understand simple concepts. The food containers had pictures on them, and that appeared to be enough. They’d torn into the packages with teeth and fingernails, devouring the freeze-dried foods in their raw state, not appearing to mind at all. Much of that brand had been only marginally edible even after being rehydrated.
“What are we going to do?” Nicole Price asked. She was feeding the dogs in their usual area. Up until yesterday, it had been a very smelly area. They’d had the dogs doing their business on spread out plastic tarps, and then were scraping it into empty five-gallon food buckets. Despite their best efforts, it was impossible to keep it completely sanitary. The whole bunker smelled like dog shit. The three dogs, Lexus (Vance’s mixed Doberman), and the Prices’ German Shepherds, Rock and Dewey, were just as miserable as everyone else.
“We wait them out,” Vance said. That statement would have drawn nods from the group only a few days ago. The retreat was well designed, armored and reinforced in just about every way.
Vance and the men went to the shower area and proceeded to go through decontamination. They’d done it every time they’d come in contact with the infected. When they were clean, the women had prepared a meal for the group. They sat quietly and ate while Vance spun the dial on his shortwave radio and found what he could get in the way of news.
“Any word from Lisa and Brad Hopkins?” he asked as he scanned. The women had been watching the radio while they took care of the ‘problem’ upstairs.
“Nothing,” his wife said. Lisa and Brad were their last two members, and equal shareholders in the retreat’s stores. But they’d lived in Dallas, and Vance had never heard if they’d gotten out. Considering what the monitors showed, even if they got as close as the gate, he didn’t know how he’d get them in. He decided not to think about that for now.
Vance had a book full of frequencies preferred by other groups like his. It was easier to receive their intermittent signals than it was to transmit to them. Still, he’d managed contact with several over the last few days. Most were either hunkered down and keeping quiet, or under siege like his group. There were also dozens of individuals stuck in various places. More than a few in cities. Listening to those broadcasts was like an old radio horror show. Just last night he’d gotten an hour of clear broadcast from a woman in Dallas. She was broadcasting with a portable transmitter from the roof of the Bank of America building.
“I can see right down Main Street toward Dealey Plaza,” she’d said in a shaky voice. “They’re everywhere, wandering down the roads. Sometimes I hear a scream or a gunshot, and they’ll run off to chase whoever it is. The ones outside the roof are still there, beating on the door whenever they hear me. They’re so, so...patient. I watched them catch a dog last night, down on the street,” her anguished voice made them all look at their pets. Lexus whined, sensing their distress. “They ripped it to pieces and ate it while it screamed. It’s the end of the world.” They’d lost the signal after that and had never heard from her again.
Vance was having trouble finding anyone. Each day there were fewer and fewer channels. Range was considerably less during the day because of solar radiation, though there’d been several transmitters he could still get. Not now. As he ate he tried not to think about that woman’s last words. Then he heard a snatch of conversation and instantly switched to the micro-tuning nob. Everyone stopped eating and listened as he slowly resolved the carrier. It was a man in mid-sentence.
“...said there were dozens of them, maybe hundreds! The Navy and Marines are protecting them.”
“Who, where?” Ann asked, and Vance shushed her so they could hear. A pause of almost a half a minute followed. He knew he hadn’t lost the transmission; he could hear the carrier wave. It was more likely he was only getting half the conversation. The problem with his radio was the height of the antenna. He’d picked the location near Flag Mountain, west of San Antonio, because it was remote, yet still within driving range of a major city for supplies. He was miles off the main road, and the retreat was in a natural hollow, making it hard to spot, even from the air. But to get a good radio signal, you needed an antenna that was tall. That’s why radio towers were on top of mountains. He’d planned to run an antenna to a nearby ridge and rig a solar powered repeater, but it was an expensive project and had never seemed to make the priority list. His regret level was high just then. Finally, the same person came back.
“Yes, they’re all surviving. Some scientist there has ways to make fresh food safe. Also I heard one station talking about a cure!” Now everyone in the bunker was holding their breath. “We’re getting ready to head west.”
“Where, where?!” Harry said under his breath.
“Who’d think I’d ever actually want to go to Los Angeles?” the anonymous person said. Everyone in the bunker seemed to moan as one and look down at their cooling meal. It was twelve hundred miles to LA, probably more driving. It might as well have been on the far side of the moon. After another pause the voice came back. “Yes, we’re going to meet the Edwards tomorrow night at the rally point, just outside Rock Springs.” Vance keyed the mic.
“Can you read me?” he said and gave his shortwave call sign. The man’s voice came back a moment later, but he was talking about road conditions and gave no sign he’d heard Vance. Vance tried several more times, then the signal faded a short time later. Everyone sat there while he walked over to the big Texas state map on the bunker wall. He knew where Rock Springs was, almost exactly a hundred miles away. One hundred miles of twisty road, choked with plague zombies and who knew what else.
They all looked to him for guidance, and that was the absolute last thing he wanted to see. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was a crash against the bunker door leading up to the house. Everyone jumped, and one of the girls gave a little scream. All three dogs were instantly on their feet, hackles raised, growling low. Another crash, and another. Vance raced over to the monitors, the ones hooked to cameras just above their heads. It only took one look to confirm the worst. The infected were in the house.
* * *
International Space Station
Alison was woken up by her hand drifting into her face. She opened her eyes and looked around. The notch in the wall of the space station, a crew compartment they called it, was about twice as much space as she needed. She was tucked into a sort of mummy bag—she’d fallen asleep halfway through their discussion of the abilities of the Azanti and someone had tucked her into bed.
She yawned and looked around, orienting herself the best she could. The sleeping space was about the size of a phone booth, lined with white padding, and had a pair of laptop computers mounted on a sort of bench. It was bereft of any decoration, having been empty until she was loaned the space to get some rest. She was tempted to go back to sleep, but her bladder had other ideas.
They’d docked at PMA-3, the pressurized mating adaptor, then spent an hour talking about their ship before Alison fell asleep. She unhooked herself from the sleeping bag and folded back the compartment door. Outside was Node 2, mainly lab space and the sleeping compartments. No one was outside the door. She pulled herself out, glad for the days of practice in zero gravity aboard Azanti, and looked at the labels. There was only one toilet on the US part of the station, and she had no idea where it was.
She looked around for a moment, reading all the various signs. None of them said ‘toilet,’ of course. The hatches leaving the Node all went into sub-modules, except one that looked like a tunnel. The sign said “Destiny.” Ironic, she thought as she grabbed one of the blue maneuvering handles that were almost everywhere, and gently launched herself.
The Destiny turned out to be all laboratory and computers, so she checked her velocity and continued onward. Next in line was Node 1. She stopped herself there. Lots of exits. However, from one came a slight hint of an unmistakable smell. Node 3 it was labeled, and when she pulled herself inside she found a cabinet with a cute little cartoon astronaut floating outside the ISS, holding a roll of toilet paper next to an orbiting outhouse.
“Bingo,” she said, and none too soon! Inside she took a few anxious minutes figuring out the mechanisms. She realized halfway through the operation that she lacked a personal ‘urine cup’ to hook to the collection device. “Bet I’m gonna catch it for this,” she mumbled as she sighed with relief. The suction was prodigious, and nothing went flying. It was a million times better than the experience aboard the Azanti. At least the men could stick their organs in a bottle. Her internal plumbing simply wasn’t designed for that sort of docking operation. They were completely out of paper towels on the tiny ship.
Relaxing to ‘let it fly,’ poised over the contraption with a suction hose pushed against her was the strangest experience in her life, next to traveling faster-than-light, of course. She’d had to learn to use a personal urination device years ago; peeing standing up was bad enough. Trying to do it floating over what amounted to a sucking coffee pot was ten times worse.
Greatly relieved, Alison slid the doors open with a sigh. Now that she’d relieved herself, she wondered where everyone else was, and if there was food. They hadn’t eaten more than protein bars and juice boxes for days.
The station was a lot louder than she’d expected. It must have been a combination of air circulation fans and a myriad of other machinery that created the loud background noise. Not quite like white noise, though still omnipresent. She went back to the entrance to Node 1 and listened. Oriented below her was the hatch standing open to Azanti. To her left was back toward Node 2 where she woke up. To the right was a strange angled tunnel and a sign that said “To FGB.” She thought she heard thumps and people moving down that way.
Alison pushed herself in that direction. As she reached the hatch, she grabbed what she thought was a handhold. It clicked, and the wall started to move! Only it wasn’t the wall, it was the hatch.
“Oh, great,” she said, and spun around to put her feet against the floor. Or wall, ceiling? Whatever, she pushed/pulled the hatch back to where it was, only it didn’t lock back in place. “Crap,” she mumbled and messed with it for a bit before giving up. It slid about half closed and stopped. She slipped through the remaining space and through the angled tunnel.
On the other side was a sort of connector tunnel. It looked a lot different than the other nodes. It was older, the paint more worn, and the wiring had an improvised look to it. All the hatches were closed, the one straight ahead only about half way. She grabbed a handhold, reached for the edge of the hatch, and instantly pulled her hand back when it touched something wet and sticky. She looked and saw her fingers were covered in something red. Red and gooey. Suddenly she realized she smelled a strong coppery odor.
“Blood?” she said incredulously. She rubbed her fingers together. It sure as hell felt like blood! Without really thinking about it, she wiped her hand on her coverall, took a grip on the door at a different location, and slid it like the other one. It moved out of the way and revealed the inside of a module. Slowly spinning in the center amidst a swirling constellation of blood globs was the copilot, Lloyd Benson. It was immediately apparent as he spun that most of his throat was torn out. His eyes were open wide in the terror of confused death.
Alison sucked in her breath and began to scream. A hand clamped over her mouth from behind. She screamed around the hand as she felt another go around her middle, just under her breasts. She tried to bite the hand and it was jerked away hastily. She threw an elbow back as hard as she could and got a grunt of surprise. She pushed away and right into the whirling mess of blood.
“Damn it, Alison,” Alex growled, holding his ribs with one hand and grabbing her leg before she could smack into their dead friend with the other. He had a foot expertly stuck through a support.
“What the fuck—” she started to scream. He put a finger over his lips and made a loud shushing hiss.
“Quiet, damn it!” he said and spun around to look back down the twisted tunnel. “How did you get here without them getting you?”
“Who getting me?” she asked, shuddering but controlling herself to some degree. “What the fuck happened to Lloyd? Christ, it’s like he was attacked by an animal!”
“You could say that,” he said and slid the door closed again. “Watch the door while I search.”
“Search for what? What do you mean? What’s happening?”
“The virus,” he said. Her mind whirled for an indefinite time, then locked onto the narrative.
“Delta on Earth? How? They haven’t been down in months, and we didn’t bring any fresh food!”
“I don’t know,” Alex admitted. He moved past his dead friend like he was nothing more than a Halloween decoration in particularly bad taste. He began systematically opening compartments and throwing their contents around helter-skelter. “When we tucked you into bed, we came down here to listen to the broadcasts from Earth. They asked if we were hungry. They’d just eaten before we docked, and said they were sorry they’d finished. They offered us some freeze-dried food.”
He pulled an instrument out and weighed it, swinging it back and forth. Apparently deciding it didn’t meet with his approval, he let it go and it floated away, bouncing against Lloyd’s body. Alison looked away from the scene. It wasn’t at all like the movies.
“Well, we ate some of their food, and while we did, I noticed that Commander Richardson was beginning to act strange. She was distracted and kept losing her train of thought. I was so busy trying to understand what was wrong with her, I didn’t realize it was happening to Thorson as well. Richardson suddenly jerked like she was having a seizure. Lloyd is, was, a trained paramedic. He didn’t think, he just floated over and grabbed her. Before anyone could do anything, she ripped his throat out.”
“Oh my God,” Alison said, putting a bloody hand to her mouth. She realized what was on the hand and her eyes got even wider. She felt bile rise in her throat and had to fight hard to keep it down. Not easy, in zero gravity. Alex glanced back at Alison and yelled at her.
“Watch the damned hatch!”
“Sorry!” she said and looked back through the little glass window in the hatch. Because of the angle of the tunnel, she couldn’t see anything beyond it. “What happened next?”
“Well, Lloyd was gushing like a horror film, trying to scream and only gurgling. Thorson was jerking like a late stage Parkinson patient, and Richardson was...chewing.”
“Damn it,” Alison moaned, almost puking again.
“You fuckin’ asked,” he said.
“I just don’t know how you can be so cool.”
“I watched my wizzo bleed out at thirty-thousand feet one time, trying to get back to the carrier,” he said, his voice without emotion. “I didn’t know Lloyd nearly as well.” He was quiet for a moment as he rummaged, then went back to his monologue. “I thought about fighting for a second, then realized Thorson was coming out of it and looking at me like an extra-rare T-bone dinner, so I took off.”
“Where? It’s not like there’s a lot of places to go in this thing.”
“I slid down the docking collar out into Node 1, swung into Node 3 and hid in the toilet.” Alison shook her head, thinking she’d just been there. “I peeked out through and saw them both fly by a few seconds later. They must have just missed me. They also weren’t very coordinated in zero gravity.”
“They’ve both been up here more than a month,” Alison pointed out.
“Yeah, but the virus must have done more than made them insane cannibals.”
“I was down in the sleeping compartments. Shit, they must have gone right by me too!” She thought about what would have happened if she’d gone the other way.
“Must have,” he agreed, “they were down there. Gotcha!” Alison looked back in time to see Alex hastily stuff a vodka bottle into the top of his light jacket and zip it up. She was about to ask why the hell a bottle of booze was so important when he pushed next to her, grabbed the blood smeared hatch by its handle, and asked “Ready?” before bracing and pulling it up and out of the way.
“I still don’t understand why they went crazy just after we showed up?”
“I fear we somehow brought the virus with us. Remember, we left while it was ramping up.” He stopped at the end of the tunnel, whispering back toward her. “Maybe it’s in the air we brought with us?”
“Then we’d have it too,” she whispered back. He was at the hatch into Node 1 and held up a hand back to her. They both fell silent. The hatch was still half closed, just like she’d left it. Clearly this bothered him, though, so she told him she’d accidentally released the hatch, sotto voce. He grunted in acknowledgement.
“We need to get at least one oxygen bottle before we get out of here,” he told her.
“We’re leaving?”
“We have to. This station is infected, at the least. And there are two crazy cannibal astronauts trying to kill us and eat our faces off. Do you want to stay?” She shook her head emphatically. “I didn’t think so. They have several in Node 3, with the toilet. Know where that is?” She nodded and pointed.
“Right over there.” He nodded also.
“Good. Stay here, I’m going to scoot in there nice and quiet, grab a bottle,” he pointed at the entrance to the lock where their ship was docked, “and get the hell out of here.”
“That last part sounds like a great idea,” she said. Alex braced himself and slowly slid the hatch open. It sounded to Alison like someone dragging a concrete block across a metal plate; it had to be reverberating throughout the entire station! After a second it was open enough that he slid through.
“It will take me a minute to get the tank. Keep an eye out? They have to be down at Node 2 at the other end of the station.”
“What do I do if I see them?” Alex looked back and shrugged.
“You’ll think of something,” he said and, just like that, he floated away and into the node with the bathroom, leaving her alone.
She tried to make herself invisible in the twisted tunnel, and largely failed. The space angled and narrowed like a funnel. In her blue OOE jumpsuit against the white of all the containers fixed to the wall of the passage, she was as visible as a hunk of coal in a snow field. As the minutes dragged on, she thought she heard a few noises from the direction Alex had gone. The omnipresent background noise made it difficult to be sure. She could swear he’d said something, so she floated out and next to the entrance to Node 3 where the bathroom and her friend was. She saw his legs sticking out of an open access panel and heard grunting sounds.
Alison sent thoughts of ‘hurry’ as she floated away, and she moved back over to the tunnel down to where the Azanti was located. The hatch stayed open, but all the waste containers had thankfully been removed by the ISS crew before everything had gone south. She could see one of the control panels, lights on standby glowing cheerily. Something went clang and she jerked, sending herself into an unfortunate spin in the center of the module.
For a few horrified seconds, she was unable to reach anything and spun on several axes like a child’s toy. She moaned and kept trying to see in the direction of the sound, her mind going crazy with images of blood-splattered astronauts coming to rip her throat out! It took all her will to calm down and wait until she drifted closer to one wall and flailed into a handhold. She grabbed it like a drowning swimmer offered a life preserver.
When she’d regained control, she could see what had caused the noise. It was the hulking figure of Dean Thorson. He was halfway down the connector to Node 2, and he was badly entangled in a series of cables that ran between the nodes. His eyes were wide, and he was struggling with bared teeth. Every few seconds he would snarl and reach toward Alison. She jerked when he did. The look on his face was...horrifying.
Alison almost bolted for the Azanti right then and there. The inhuman look on the former astronaut’s face made her feel like she wanted to throw up again.
“Alex,” she tried to call, then stopped, realizing the commander was still out there too, somewhere, listening, hungry. But where Thorson was trapped, there was an opportunity. He was in the middle of the connection between the nodes. If she could get close enough, she could maybe close the door on him!
It went against her every instinct to go toward the insane man instead of as far away as she could get. Still, that’s exactly what she did. She pushed off the handhold and toward the hatchway. For a terror-filled moment she thought she’d misjudged and was going to fly right into Thorson’s arms, but there was a blue handhold and she caught it, swinging to a stop with more grace than she’d intended. Thorson snarled and swiped at her, pulling the cable even tighter around his waist.
Alison shifted her grip and reached up, grabbing the handle of the hatchway between herself and Thorson. She pulled the release and it came loose, sliding downward. She put a hand against the wall and pushed it closed. Thorson gave one last snarl as it thumped closed, clicking as it locked. Alison gave a little laugh of celebration as she pulled herself to the tiny window to look at the man. A second later Thorson slipped the cable around his waist and slammed up against the hatch.
“Jesus,” she hissed and pulled back. Thorson slammed his face against the glass, teeth snapping as if he could bite through and reach her. Blood ran from split lips, and he broke a tooth. There were red blobs of blood floating in the zero gravity as Thorson flailed and bit at the lock. “F-fuck you,” she stammered and pushed back. She floated back away from the hatch, slowly passing over the one that led down to their ship. She’d just turned her head to look toward Alex, when something slammed into her.
The blow came from what she perceived as below, and it rammed her into the ceiling opposite the hatch to her ship. The attack had come from their ship! The impact against the wall was like hitting the mats she remembered from gymnastics class. They weren’t hard floor, but also not particularly soft. It was a bit better than being slammed to a hard, grassy lawn. The air went out of her with a whoosh!
Alison saw stars and felt fingers far stronger than anything she’d ever felt claw at her neck. She was in a sprawling ball of hands, arms, and legs. In a flash, teeth were snapping at her face and Alison saw what was attacking her. The visage of Commander Richardson was one of pure horror. Her once comely face was screwed up in unthinking rage. Blood covered her entire lower face, smeared her hair, and stuck to her previously pristine uniform. As she snapped, Alison saw bits of human skin in her teeth. Someone screamed, high and shrill, and it went on and on.
“Push her back!” she heard Alex say.
“I can’t!” she cried, and when she screamed again she realized she’d been the one screaming all along.
“You can,” he said from somewhere. As Alison spun with Commander Richardson, she caught the briefest glimpse of Alex. He was framed in the hatch to Node 3, and he was holding something. “Do it!” he roared. Alison mustered all she had against the insane, clawing, cannibal ex-astronaut and pushed her back, maybe a foot. Her arms quivered with the strain.
“I...can’t...hold...her,” Alison groaned through clenched teeth. The two spun for another moment, and then there was a thunderous boom. The concussion of the blast hit her ears like a slap from a weightlifter. Commander Richardson was knocked back away from Alison, and she smashed against the wall, her eyes wide in surprise. Alison caught a handhold and pulled herself away.
Commander Richardson snarled, blood pumping from the bullet wound in her left shoulder. Alison turned and saw Alex, one arm wrapped around a handhold, the other holding a big semiautomatic handgun at full extension. Part of her wondered where he’d gotten it, just before the gun boomed again.
Alison put her hands over her ears and narrowed her eyes against the pain of the explosion in the enclosed space. Commander Richardson pushed away from the wall toward Alex just as he fired. The gun recoiled, the force traveling through his entire body and spinning him around the arm holding the wall. Alison watched the strange trajectory of the ejected casing bouncing off the walls and across the space. She looked back and Commander Richardson was halfway across the module.
“Damn it,” Alex spat and used his legs to correct his angle, “didn’t know it would be this hard!” The gun roared again, the round passing through Commander Richardson’s forearm, and like the previous one, on through the wall of the module.
The impact made the infected astronaut spin and miss her target. She collided with an instrument panel, facing away from Alex, five feet away. Alex recovered from his third shot, lined up the gun, and fired at point blank range. The bullet entered the back of the astronaut’s head and expanded, blowing the better part of her brains all over the panel she’d landed on. The cone of exploded brains, blood, and bone was like a tornado of meat.
Alison finished her slow-motion rearward movement and bumped up against the wall next to Alex, on the opposite side from the twitching ex-astronaut’s corpse.
“Quick, put this on,” Alex said. Alison couldn’t look away from the spreading storm of body parts. “Damn it,” she heard and was suddenly grabbed.
“What,” she said as a mask was slipped over her head. It covered her entire face and eyes. An instant later little spots of red began appearing on the clear plastic eyepieces.
“The blood is probably infectious,” he said, then looked intently. “Shit, we don’t have very long.” She followed his gaze and saw that the blood and other bio matter was moving in a pattern. A series of little vortexes were forming, drawing the blood and debris toward the station wall in three places. The spots where Alex’s bullets had punched holes through the thin walls. An alarm began to blare, and there was a disturbing moan from the station bulkhead.
“Into our ship!” Alex barked, and pushed her toward the hatch. Alison came partly back to her senses.
“Maybe we can close the hatches?” she asked as she caught the edge of the hatch into their ship.
“No time,” Alex said and pointed. Alison looked. At first it just looked like a section of wall. Then she saw the spot turning red from all the blood being sucked through a hole. Then she saw that the entire section was...bulging outward. Oh, fuck. “Go,” he urged, and she did.
She scrambled down through the hatch, followed an instant later by Alex awkwardly towing a three-foot-long oxygen cylinder. She moved as far into the tiny cabin as she could, making enough room for him to get inside. Once there, he pushed the cylinder out of his way and spun into a ball to grab the inside hatch. The station on the other side moaned like a wounded animal. The hissing of air loss was becoming a roar. Alex braced and pivoted the hatch closed with a thunk, cutting off the sound of the dying station. He pressed the locking button, and the electric motors dogged the hatch. A second later, there was a massive bang, and the ship shook violently.
“I think the ISS just exploded,” Alison said. They both moved forward to the windows. Outside they could see the curve of the earth. The sky was full of spinning chunks of the former International Space Station.
“Well that sucks,” Alex said. They watched the debris for a time. Several larger pieces spun into view, and their orientation began to slew. Alex deduced that the station was losing attitude control. “We better get out of here,” he said. They took a moment to carefully strip off their masks and stuff them into garbage bags. Next, they wiped down with a pair of alcohol swabs. They also needed to secure the oxygen tank and hook it into the ship’s life-support.
Once the tank was inline, the life support computer tasted the air from the tank and read the coupling, then reporting they had an additional eleven hours of air. Fifteen minutes after they’d dogged the hatch, they were ready to detach from the remainder of the station.
“Uncoupling,” Alex said and pressed the control. The black-and-yellow lines called barber poles didn’t change. “Uhm...” he said and pressed the button again, with the same results.
“What’s that mean?” Alison asked.
“It means, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”
* * *
135 miles west of San Francisco
The USCGC Boutwell was making almost 30 knots and trimmed for cruise. She was making one knot over her rated maximum, likely because she was also short quite a few crew. After releasing the ship they’d had under tow, and replenishing her fuel from a Navy oiler, she’d set out on the mission Admiral Tomlinson had given her. She had onboard a dozen naval specialists for the mission. It just so happened she was also doing what General Rose had tasked her with.
LTJG Grange, the commanding officer of the Boutwell and currently the highest-ranking Coast Guard sailor available, sighed as she looked at the charts from her command chair. From the time she’d signed on to the Coast Guard, she’d known that she would one day command her own ship. Her father had said he’d known it, too, when she’d been commissioned as an ensign. He was crying in his wheelchair at her graduation ceremony, IV hanging from a bracket feeding him nutrients. All he’d wanted was to live long enough to see her graduate. The cancer took him one week later. But she didn’t want the big chair like this, at the end of the world.
“On course, Captain,” the navigator confirmed from his station at the rear of the bridge. Grange nodded. “We should reach the Strait of Juan de Fuca in thirty-five hours.”
Grange looked at her maps, with hand-drawn navigational markings showing their projected stops for the admiral, and the two stops for the general. Six EPIRB, or Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, were between their position and Vancouver. She got constant updates from the radio shack. Frequencies were alive with calls. Death spasms, she thought of them. There were three distinct categories.
The first were distress calls, and they were by far the most numerous. It was like a mosaic of pain, death, and destruction. Most were incoherent, while others were as detailed as a high-definition image. People trapped in buildings or ships. All of them were under attack, or trapped, or just panicking. Some were out of food or water and beyond panic.
The second were the only encouragement. Talk between people. Most of those were ships talking to each other. Many coordinating to reach the flotilla. Others were groups on the mainland holding out, reaching out to each other, surviving.
The final was the most disturbing. There were a few commercial broadcast channels still on the air, mostly radio but some television. A few were just loops playing repeatedly with news from days before order disintegrated. They found one live TV broadcast, from Eugene, Oregon. A news reporter was being shown over a bluescreen with the typical skyline shot of the city. It looked like a peaceful morning where thousands would be commuting to their jobs. The panic in her voice and the sounds of muted gunfire said otherwise.
“...our news helicopter confirms the Churchill High School refugee center is in flames,” the reporter was saying, her face wide-eyed, and her hair askew. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “There is still some limited ‘net traffic on local servers, though experts say they’re working to restore national service. Police Chief William DeCorsie stated via email that what appeared to be a massive demonstration was taking place around the Churchill High School center. Attempts to contact them have resulted in violent responses. Chief DeCorsie stated there was...loss of life.” She looked down at some handwritten notes before continuing.
“Psychologists and disease experts from the state government are struggling to find a way to deal with the so-called plague victims in a humane way. Many of them were being housed at the Peace Health Sacred Heart Medical center. There were conflicting reports that the center had a collapse of internal control and had to be sealed off. Police have been unable to regain control.” There was a sudden burst of gunfire and she looked aside in horror, just as the transmission cut off. The channel had remained off the air. Grange knew that a TV monitor in the radio shack had been tuned to the channel constantly, in the hopes that something would come back. Maybe they were still alive in Eugene, holding out. Maybe.
“Captain?” her radar operator said.
“Yes?”
“Ma’am, the first of the EPIRB should be within visual.” Grange got up and grabbed a pair of the powerful binoculars hanging on hooks by the bridge windows and focused them out ahead of the cutter. The sea was starting to be whipped into whitecaps as the wind increased and temperature dropped. She scanned for a moment until she saw a black smudge.
“Got it,” she said. “Change course three degrees to starboard.”
“Three degrees to starboard, aye,” the helmsman replied. They sailed in silence for a quarter of an hour until she raised the glasses and again looked. The outline of the container ship was visible now, as was the curl of smoke from its rear deck. The ship was foundering in the swells, visibly listing as it settled. Grange could see hundreds of containers had broken free and were spilling over the side. As she watched, one of the containers on the rear stack, near the bridge, exploded into a ball of fire which rose rapidly into the sky.
“Change course to the next EPIRB,” Grange ordered and put the glasses back on their peg. The cutter turned back to the north and their next stop. Several seconds later the sound of the explosion rolled over the cutter as it turned to its new course.
* * *
The Flotilla, 150 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA
Vice Admiral Lance Tomlinson put the headset aside on his desk and sighed. Ever since his Greyhound had set down on the Ronald Reagan, and he’d assumed command of the squadron, nothing had gone right. He’d managed over the last two days to establish a slight air of normalcy, just barely, and then he’d gotten a call.
It was interesting enough that he’d gotten a call in the first place, since all forms of communications were basically ruined. A kill switch, installed by the NSA in computers, land lines, and repeaters all over the country to protect against a cyber-terrorist attack, had been triggered by the emergency. Most of the command staff knew about it. War contingency. He knew the President would never use it. The man was a bit of a character, but not crazy. The call informed him that the President was dead, and they had a new President. She’d been the Secretary of State a few days ago, before the President succumbed to the plague in route to Andrews Air Force Base. Oh fuck.
The new President, Madam President, had hit the switch. She’d said it was to mitigate news of the plague outbreak. The result had been like throwing a five-gallon can of gas on a small kitchen grease fire. The house had just about burned to the ground. When the call came in, he found none other than that very same new President on the other end.
Since she’d gotten in contact with the admiral, he’d had several conversations with the POTUS. She was his Commander-in-Chief, and he had to follow her orders. The problem was, it appeared the end of the world wasn’t sitting well with Madam President. His aide, Commander Bascom, came in with a steaming cup of coffee. He saw the look on his boss’s face and shook his head.
“Hasn’t changed her opinion, has she?” he asked.
“Not in the least,” the admiral said and took the cup. Coffee used to be merely fuel, something to help squeeze a few more hours out of every day. Now with a finite supply, he was trying to cherish every cup. He sipped and grimaced. No matter how inferior the coffee might be. Bascom looked out the window to the construction team nearby. The sun was approaching the horizon, highlighting that nothing was happening. “She doesn’t seem to understand that a Boeing E4B is not a C-17! She just keeps insisting they’re similar in size, so it should be possible.”
“The E4B is a heavily modified 747,” Bascom said, shaking his head, “it doesn’t have a fraction of the takeoff and landing capabilities of the C-17.”
“Tell that to her,” the admiral said and pointed to the phone.
“So what’s your plan?”
“I don’t have one,” the admiral admitted, “but she does.” The commander waited patiently. “I had a conference with our senior Marine commander, Colonel Alinsky on the Essex, and General Rose on the Pacific Adventurer. We’re going to be mounting a joint operation.”
“I thought the Marines and Army were happy to just be left alone for now and protect as many civilians as possible.”
“The president wasn’t interested in entertaining that,” the admiral said with a snort. The Essex was just in view and they could both see a pair of huge Marine CH-53 Sea Stallions lifting off, then turning east. The commander watched them go, then realized what that meant.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me?” he asked.
“I wish I were,” Admiral Tomlinson said, sipping his coffee, “I dearly wish I were.” Up on the deck, more helicopters were being maneuvered around as flight operations slowly came back to life.
* * *
Near the International Space Station
The situation was quickly going from bad to much worse. Azanti and the ruptured module of the ISS it was still docked to were spinning on two axes. That was bad enough. Alex West, now head and only pilot of the ship, had managed to get a laser ranging of their altitude.
“We’re in a decaying orbit,” he confirmed.
“That’s bad?” Alison asked. He nodded. She looked outside again and felt her stomach lurch. “Are we spinning faster?”
“Yeah,” Alex confirmed, “the hunk of station we’re moored to must be venting. It’s acting like an RCS.” She looked at him in confusion. “Reaction Control System.”
“Oh,” she said and went back to the panel she had open. The control system was the one handling the docking mechanism. She’d worked on most systems installed on Azanti at one time or another. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them.
“Any luck with that?” Alex asked after a time.
“No,” she said, giving up and closing the panel. “I think the locking mechanism is frozen.”
“Think?” She shrugged. “But you’re not sure...”
“No,” she admitted. “I didn’t work on this system. If we could go out and look at it...”
“No suits,” he reminded her. She looked out the window at the progressively faster spinning planet. “I estimate three hours before we hit the upper atmosphere.” He worked at the controls for a moment. These were the original controls the ship was built with, not the ones improvised to operate the alien-made drive module. “I’m going to see if I can stabilize this entire mess.”
“Is that smart?”
“No,” he admitted, “but it’s all I can think of.” He entered some commands. “Buckle in.” Her eyes got wide, and she grabbed her chair and pulled herself down into it. After days in the craft, she buckled the three-point harness with practiced ease.
“Go,” she said, and Alex entered a command. Something went thump, thump, thump.
“Thrusters firing,” he said, and there was an ominous groan from the hatch they’d come through. “Come on,” he hissed as the thrusters continued their staccato firing. Every time they fired, the hull groaned. “Jesus, that module must weight ten fucking tons!” It went on for a minute, then the console started beeping and he flipped a control. The firing stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“RCS gas is down to less than half,” he said and sighed. “We don’t have enough to fight whatever the out-gassing is doing.”
“So, what now?” Alison asked.
“Now,” he said, “now we get radical. The docking collar uses a rotating latch. The explosion must have torqued it. So we’re going to torque it back.”
“Is that smart?”
“You know you say that a lot?”
“I wasn’t aware of that,” she said. He looked at her, and she gave him a wink. Alex chuckled and started working the controls. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I break the collar from the hull, the ship decompresses, and we die horribly.”
“I always appreciate honesty,” she said.
“If it blows,” he said, “it’ll be quick.”
“Honesty,” she said again. “Ready when you are.” Alex nodded and flipped a control. The RCS fired again. A different set this time. The ship tried to rotate, and the docking collar gave a horrendous screech. “Oh shit,” she said. BANG! Allison gasped and sucked in a lungful of air, convinced it would be her last ever. It took a couple seconds for her to realize she was still alive.
“We’re free,” he said. “Shit, it worked!” He manipulated the controls, the RCS firing as he pushed them away before the wildly-spinning ISS module collided with him. “I’ll be damned!”
“Wait, you didn’t think it would work?” Alison gasped. “What the hell?”
“Well,” he said, “if it didn’t we were dead anyway. Sometimes you just roll the dice.” She glared at him as he stabilized their flight. A couple lights were flashing on the console, and he examined the controls. “We have a slight pressure leak, so I’m going to get our location and start a reentry. We’re not home yet, but at least now we have a chance.” He brought the alien drive back on line, and the ship quickly moved away from the growing debris field which used to be a $100 billion space station.
Alison tried not to freak out as the ship was rocked by increasingly violent shudders, and streamers of white hot plasma flashed across the cockpit. Her breathing became more and more jerky, and she gripped the arm of her seat with white knuckles. Gravity was back, and it was crushing her down in the chair. She was about to scream in fear when she heard something she wasn’t expecting. It was Alex, and he was whistling a song.
She strained to hear over the sound of the buffeting Azanti was taking. It sounded familiar, but he wasn’t whistling very loudly, almost under his breath. She kept trying to catch it until she realized the buffeting was past and there was just the roar of wind past the ship. The sky outside was blue again.
“We made it!” she screamed.
“Never any doubt,” Alex said and winked. He worked the controls, and the ship began a sweeping turn, burning off velocity.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Just passed over Hawaii, going about Mach Five. ETA the California coast, about 40 minutes.”
“Excellent,” she said, smiling. “Hey, what was that you were whistling?”
“Oh, that?” he chuckled. “‘Pop goes the Weasel.’”
* * * * *
