Interrupt

by Jeff Carlson

  “Charles Keen!” Marcus yelled. “Chuck!”

  The breeze rustled at the spy hole, taunting him with fresh oxygen and the dusty grass smell of the mountains. Was somebody coming?

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “There won’t be a helicopter if the pulse is—”

  Another man paced into the field. His gait was different, heavier, sturdier, although he didn’t look as if he weighed more than Chuck. He carried a short, bone-smooth branch with its bark removed.

  Marcus realized the branch was a weapon and leaned back from his spy hole.

  Hide, he thought, but he was concealed by the wall, so he pressed his eye to the hole again.

  The man wasn’t alone. Marcus glimpsed at least three others walking with him in a skirmish line through the stout white dishes. All of them were armed. More disturbing, every man in the battle group carried himself with the same stoop-shouldered pose.

  Far across the array, Marcus also thought he saw Roell.

  “Ruh,” he said. His throat wouldn’t open. He didn’t want to draw those men into the station, yet he couldn’t let his son pass.

  Roell’s obsidian features were unmistakable. Marcus’s heart leapt with shock and joy, but Roell was too far away to guess if he was with the armed men or running from them like Chuck.

  Then the skirmish line was gone. So was his son. They’d walked out of range of his spy holes.

  Marcus yelled and yelled. “Roell! Roooooooeeeell!”

  A new sound wafted back to him. One of the men called, “Nnnnnnnmh!”

  Another man answered, “Hnnh!”

  Marcus didn’t know what that meant, but as a language, it was more complex than anything he’d heard from Kym or Chuck. It helped him decide. He couldn’t stand here while his son left him behind.

  Even if he had unlimited food and fuel, Marcus wondered what he’d hoped to accomplish inside this room. If he lost his memory, he would probably lose the ability to read, too, so what good were his notes? There was no reason to create a set of charts that no one would ever see.

  His greatest fear wasn’t that the array couldn’t be fixed. It was that he would improve his shelter, jury-rig a permanent protected area, then sit alone in it as the sun flared forever. He would have his memories, but would there be any worth keeping?

  The people outside seemed competitive, even violent, and yet he’d seen Kym and Chuck at their best. He wanted to be a part of their Eden for as long as they had left.

  If he went outside now, he would gain as much as he lost. Life might be brutish and short, but at least it would be life. He would have Roell. They would recognize each other. He was sure of that, so he stepped down from the wire rack and ran to the door.

  He took down the stack of boxes he’d set against it.

  He cleared the lock with a screwdriver.

  Then he opened the door.

  NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

  He dreamed. The images were fleeting—a kaleidoscope of white faces and brown mountain slopes—rain and wind—but his other senses made lasting impressions on his soul. He felt hunger. He tasted blood and roots. Friends were constantly around him, and danger, and with each step he walked a balance between those two states—sometimes safe, sometimes at risk. Sometimes he increased the risk to himself in order to protect his companions, but never was there a deliberate thought. He did not consider his choices. He acted.

  The small pains that hounded him were unimportant, such as the gash in his ankle or the bruises on his forearm. If he scratched an itch, it was forgotten. If they were cold, they huddled together. More extraordinary was his passion for the woman. Their pleasure was ferocious. There was also the low, enduring thrill of the hunt and his rage in combat.

  His tribe clashed twice with another breed of men. Each group tried to drive the other from a muddy creek, the best water source in the area, until their running war was ended by a larger threat. A monster thundered out of the sky. It scattered his tribe. He lost everyone in the noise, which followed him across the sparsely wooded mountainside. Finally he turned to fight. The thing was immense, and its breath pounded at him like a stone. Whup whup whup whup whup whup whup. He ran beneath its belly in order to inflict whatever damage was possible, giving himself to the monster. Maybe the rest of his tribe would escape. Then a square mouth opened on the monster’s side. A man stood there with no eyes, no mouth, only a dark, smooth bulb in place of his head. Black wisps sprang from the man’s hand and the world flashed with lightning—

  Voices reached him inside his agony.

  “Don’t drop him.”

  “The fucker bit me! He—”

  Awareness returned in fits and pops. He hurt on so many levels. It was difficult to see. His head swam, and everywhere his middle-aged body felt overexerted. Even lying in a fetal position was an ordeal. His knees throbbed. His skin was covered in small wounds.

  One voice held the hard tone of a man accustomed to command. “Doctor Wolsinger?”

  Marcus tried to open his eyes but reeled from the chaos of silhouettes and light. He realized he’d wet himself. His urine was even more pungent than his sweat, adding to the miasma around him, but he was too far gone to feel much embarrassment. His stink was only another form of suffering.

  “Doctor Wolsinger, we’re with the Defense Intelligence Agency,” the man said. “I know you’re in pain. We’re giving you morphine. Coming out of the EMP can cause symptoms like a grade-two concussion, and we had to subdue you out there. Some of the discomfort you’re feeling is joint ache from the Taser.”

  “Where—” Marcus said, but a single word was all he could manage. He swallowed and swallowed again, like a fish, unable to get past the roughness in his throat.

  “You’re aboard a V-22 Osprey currently on the ground near your installation. My name is Lieutenant Commander Drew Haldane.”

  “Where are the others?” Marcus gasped, struggling with his eyes again. He needed to see. Then he realized some of his blindness was caused by a soft fabric they’d pulled down to his nose. He reached for it.

  Drew caught his arm. “Don’t take that off. It’ll protect you against the EMP.”

  Drew reseated the fabric on Marcus’s forehead. The fingers of his right hand were swollen beneath an aluminum brace. Behind him stood a young woman with her face pinched in concern. He wore a uniform. She did not.

  “I wasn’t alone,” Marcus said, trying to sit up.

  Rebecca had been with him. He was certain of it. He could taste her unique salt smell as if his senses had been cross-wired. The memory of her scent was on his tongue and in his mind, and he’d seen Roell through his spy hole. Had they been together? So much was distorted.

  “Easy,” Drew said, helping Marcus with his good hand. “You’re safe now. This is Dr. Emily Flint and Lieutenant Buegeleisen.”

  Emily nodded hello. Beside her stood a second man in uniform, a tall, lanky guy with a horse nose. He carried a pistol. Who was he guarding?

  Me, Marcus realized. He’s guarding me.

  There had been fighting outside. His shoulder and back ached from sharp, wrenching movements, and the contusion on his arm was probably from blocking another man’s club. None of this frightened Marcus as much as he would have believed. In fact, he felt a glimmer of self-worth.

  Drew obviously felt wary of him. They all did. Their expressions were troubled, but they wouldn’t underestimate him, and Marcus savored their respect.

  He glanced from side to side through the fuselage. There were no seats, only the bare deck and a loading ramp at the back, where the plane was crowded with several pieces of lab equipment and a cardboard box secured to the deck with yellow straps. There was also a black body bag.

  The lump was smaller than a full-grown man. It completely unnerved Marcus, and he moaned, “What did you do!?”

  “That’s not anyone you know,” Emily said quickly. “We… We’ve been in Los Angeles, San Jose, and Berkeley, and it’s awful out there.”

  “Where is
my son!”

  “Take it easy,” Drew said. “It’s been almost three days since the EMP started. You look like you were outside the whole time.”

  “Three days,” Marcus said, trying to believe it.

  “Today is the 16th. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  The most prominent emotion in Marcus was his conviction that he would reunite with his son. Before today, his temper might have gotten the better of him. This was almost a peaceful feeling like faith. Marcus welcomed it.

  Something happened to me out there, he thought. Something good.

  Certain aspects of his mind and soul had changed in ways he’d barely begun to perceive, and Emily seemed to notice his discovery of his own transformation. Her blue eyes soaked up every detail in his face until Marcus tried to deflect her attention.

  “His name is Roell,” Marcus said. “He can’t be far away.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Drew said. “Our orders are to find you and your staff. We didn’t realize you had dependents in the area.”

  “I won’t leave without him.”

  “That may be impossible,” Drew said. “First we need to secure any data and gear you think is useful. Our instructions are to bring all assets to a designated bunker. Help us, and we’ll do everything we can to look for your son.”

  Marcus didn’t trust him. Drew never said I. Every pronoun was an impersonal we or us. Would he honor his promise to rescue Roell?

  “First you need to find him,” Marcus said.

  “Mr. Wolsinger, there are only seven of us including yourself and Dr. Flint,” Drew said. “I’m sorry. We don’t have enough men, and we’re under strict orders to save you. We’ll send another team as soon as there’s time.”

  “Why would you do that after you’ve taken everything you need?”

  “Sir, we have to get this installation up and running again. The plan was never to strip this place. Our orders are to safeguard as many staff members as we can locate along with your most important data and hard drives. As soon as possible, we’ll return in force.” Drew pointed through the wall of the plane. “We can land C-130s on the road on the hillside. Then we’ll bring in as much material as it takes to reinforce the station against the EMP.”

  “We need the array,” Bugle said as Drew added, “We’ll find your son.”

  Marcus stared at them, silently calculating his options. Then he nodded. “Most of what you want is in the electronics room,” he said.

  Feeling nervous on several levels, Emily signaled Drew before he left the aircraft. Outside, Staff Sergeant Patrick and the two Guardsmen patrolled the V-22 Osprey. They expected to be attacked. But she was anxious for another reason.

  She couldn’t imagine how he’d forgive her for Julie. It was her demands that had caused them to pursue P.J. into the city. She would never forget seeing Drew crouched beside Julie’s body.

  “Drew?” she asked, waving him toward her equipment in back. If necessary, she would pretend they needed to check something in order to get him away from Marcus.

  She understood Marcus’s sorrow. She might have been an ally to him. He must feel even more strongly for his son than she’d felt for P.J., but she could never ask Drew to look for someone outside. Not again. More than that, she didn’t like the flat light in Marcus’s eyes.

  “Be careful,” she said. “This guy… He worries me.”

  Drew met her eyes, something he hadn’t done easily since Julie died. He worried Emily, too, because he hadn’t blamed her. Instead, he was polite.

  “We won’t leave you alone with him,” Drew said. “He’s coming with us into the station.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant. I don’t think he’s telling us everything he knows.”

  “He might not know everything he knows,” Drew said. It wasn’t a joke. “He was out there for a long time, and his pupil response is slow. He’s concussed.”

  Emily shook her head. “He must have some sense of who he was.”

  They weren’t positive if Marcus had been a primitive or a Neanderthal while he was outside. As they approached the Hoffman Square Kilometer Field, Bugle had spotted one group assaulting another on a distant slope. Both fled from the plane. Luckily, Marcus’s skin color made him easy to single out.

  Drew had used the aircraft like a giant hand, hovering and banking until he trapped Marcus in a hollow. Marcus had screamed when Patrick leaned through the side door with a Taser, but engine noise kept Patrick from discerning any clear sounds.

  “He was wearing his shoes,” Emily said.

  “He’s not the only primitive we’ve seen who kept them on. He’s definitely not autistic.”

  “No.” She frowned. “No, you’re right.”

  Drew had been right every time since she’d met him. His one mistake had been in allowing P.J. too close, which was her fault, but her guilt was only the surface reason for her agitation. She liked Drew. He was competent, brave, and committed even after what she’d cost him.

  Emily had grown sure she could rely on him. That feeling of security was dear to her, especially after they’d left L.A. without anyone else she knew.

  Colonel Bowen and Captain Walsh were needed at Silver Lake. Nor was there room to spare aboard the plane. Emily, Drew, Bugle, Patrick, and the two Guardsmen were the only ones who’d flown away from the hospital. They’d also left the wounded and dead Neanderthals after taking blood, hair, and fingernail samples in addition to photos and fingerprints. If Drew had brought those men along, he might have been forced to care for them—or to turn them loose—because he needed to reserve his M-string for the experts on his list.

  He’d been ordered to rescue more people than could fit in the aircraft. His target list included biologists at DNAllied and UCLA; engineers in Santa Monica; a famous astronomer in Oxnard; computer scientists in San Jose; geneticists in Berkeley and Walnut Creek. They obviously hadn’t believed he would have much success, and yet Emily wondered. What if he’d found most of the VIPs? If some people had to be left behind, where did she rank? Could she have swayed him to keep her aboard?

  Above the fast-moving storms, the sun was a mottled orange—and beneath the cloud cover, southern California was littered with burned-out cities, downed aircraft, wrecked trains, and jammed streets.

  Maybe she was fortunate that none of the people on Drew’s list were in shelters near their work or homes. In six cases, Drew hadn’t even able to land. He’d circled above corporate buildings or government labs as Bugle and Patrick used binoculars to scan for anyone who matched the photos they’d been given. The only other option was to put the aircraft down and walk into the debris. With just five military personnel aboard the plane, which he couldn’t leave unguarded, Drew could have sent three men into the ruins, but if something happened, he might never see them again. Emily was glad when he kept everyone with the plane.

  They were also hampered by a steady downpour. For two days, the rain had come in torrents. Once they’d stayed on the ground for six hours because Drew refused to fly in heavy turbulence. The storm doused the fires, leaving rivulets of black sediment in the streets—but before the weather turned, San Jose had burned down to concrete and steel.

  Hunting for the VIPs was like looking for needles in junkyards, except each junkyard was miles wide and the people they wanted actively avoided them, burrowing into alleyways and buildings to hide from the plane.

  Worse, Drew had confided to her that America’s standoff with China had turned into a shooting war. Both nations were hamstrung by the pulse. Neither could move its forces against the other, but they were barely able to engage in diplomacy, either. Most of their satellites were down. Landlines, cell towers, and Internet hubs were fried at key points. Radio frequencies were inundated by the pulse. Meanwhile, the Navy maintained its strike group in the South China Sea, including its nuclear submarines.

  What if one side launched by mistake? Emily thought the leaders of both countries would be idiotic to start any
thing, piling disaster upon disaster, yet they were human, and human beings could be selfish and mean and delusional. Someone might think now was the perfect opportunity for an attack.

  Drew should have taken her to safety first. His mission was a waste of time. With every hour, it became more and more unlikely they’d find anyone on their list, but she didn’t know how to ask without sounding like a heartless bitch. Nor was there any way to argue with his superiors. Drew had been given his orders and sent on his own, and Bugle gleaned very few updates from his static-ridden satellite transmissions.

  This morning, they’d caught a glimpse of another plane. Other teams had gone to find the crews at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena or the physicists at LLNL in Livermore. Drew’s team wasn’t totally alone. A skeletal remnant of America remained, and yet the six of them were a microcosm unto themselves. They lived inside the plane. At sunset, Drew landed. The men took turns resting while two stood guard. What would they do if they were attacked? Fly away, she supposed. The Osprey had no guns.

  Emily was amazed she’d been able to sleep. There were killers outside. Her bedroll was uncomfortable on the flight deck. She had no privacy. But her exhaustion was as constant as her fear and stress, and she trusted Drew to protect her.

  Three times he’d filled the Osprey’s tanks at abandoned airports, working carefully to take what he needed without being electrocuted by the static charges built up in the fuel trucks or other aircraft he used to siphon fuel. Emily was useless. The best she could do was to serve their meals and tidy up afterward. Stupidly, she’d almost scorched herself on the magnesium mix included with their Meal, Ready-to-Eat rations until Bugle showed her how to heat the food.

  Bugle was a clown. Despite everything, he tried to make her smile, pretending to grab all the chocolate from the MRE pouches or talking about where they’d put a couch and a TV inside the plane if she wanted to play house.

  Emily thought Bugle was hitting on her. She watched Drew instead. Once upon a time, she’d loved to be silly. Now it was Drew’s serious, dedicated nature that appealed to her most.