Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues]

by Knight, Stephen

  Then the door lights flashed red. The big bi-fold door slowly opened and locked into place, and the SCEV trundled through the opening. A moment later, the door closed, and the decontamination process began. Detergent-laden water sprayed throughout the compartment, sluicing away any contaminants that might have entered during the rig’s departure.

  “I guess that’s it,” Kelly said.

  “Not yet.” Laird sped up the video again. Sure enough, six minutes after the rig had departed—the external cameras showed it had parked right outside—the tall man who had led the expedition returned to the airlock, wearing a full environmental suit. He went through a long decontamination process then entered the site without removing his gear. He walked to the console where Laird and Kelly sat. He removed his mask, pulled out the chair, and sat down. As he moved the computer keyboard toward him, he looked up at the camera that was recording him. He had trimmed his beard during his time at the site but hadn’t shaved it off, and for the first time, Laird got a good look at him. He was older, perhaps in his fifties or sixties, and his eyes were blue orbs stationed below a heavy brow. His nose was hooked, and a long scar rippled across the right side of his face, from eyebrow to jawline. He raised his hand and gave the camera a jaunty salute, the gesture predatory and chilling. Laird had no idea what the man had gone through, but from that one salute alone, he knew two things. The man was prior service, and he had no humanity left in him. The man then returned to the keyboard and began typing away.

  “Deleting the security data,” Kelly said. “Definitely knows his way around our systems. And look! He tried to change the facility password!” She pointed at a log entry on one of the other screens. “Smart guy, but he messed up. The change wasn’t saved.”

  “Why the hell not?” Laird asked.

  Kelly tapped a character on the screen. “He used a semicolon in the password. The system doesn’t accept them. He must’ve missed the prompt, because he definitely submitted it and it was rejected.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Laird returned to the video.

  Sure enough, the man tried submitting the password twice then shrugged and gave up. The site had remained unmolested for more than ten years. As far as he was concerned, it would remain so for another decade. The screen then went black for an instant as the deletion occurred then picked up again a few moments later. The man was already gone.

  “Did you recognize him?” Kelly asked.

  “Nope. Never saw him before, obviously. He wasn’t on post when the war began.”

  “But he must have survived in a zone that wasn’t so hot. And for some time too. I wonder what happened to him over those ten years.”

  Laird rolled back the video to where the man’s face was shown. The facility’s cameras weren’t designed for extreme high definition, but they did the job there. He knew if he ever saw the man again, he’d recognize him in a heartbeat. “He reminds me of someone, though.”

  “Who?”

  Laird looked at the image on the display, at the flat, emotionless cast of the man’s eyes. He was certain that he was looking at an apex predator in the postapocalyptic world, but he’d seen the sight before—and frequently.

  “Mulligan,” he said. “Same bearing. Same general ‘fuck you’ attitude. Same ability to kill in a second. Take my word for it—this dude’s a hundred percent murderer.”

  Kelly nodded after a moment. “But Mulligan’s not a murderer—at least, not officially.”

  Laird pointed at the screen. “When we meet this guy, if Mulligan’s not with us? We’re dead.”

  Kelly had no response for that. She looked at Laird with her blue eyes, and he could see a stirring of fear in them. That was expected. Laird felt it himself. Some very bad dudes had taken their gear, and they were rolling out in the same general area as SCEV Four, and whereas Four wasn’t on a war footing, those guys were. It was bad news all around.

  “Okay, save all this stuff and upload it to the rig. We’ll want to show this to people at some point, should we make it back to Harmony in one piece. You change the access codes?”

  “Done. Here.” Kelly showed him the new password, written down on a piece of paper. “We should also change the codes on the other rigs. They’re still default. Just in case this guy does manage to get past the outer security. The supply area still has a lot of missiles. We wouldn’t want him getting his hands on any more.”

  Laird nodded. That seemed like closing the barn door after the horse had already run off, but it would have to do. “I’m going to head back to the rig. One last thing—try to raise Four. I know we can’t, but try it, anyway. All right?”

  “On it.”

  “If you don’t get a reply after fifteen minutes, come join us. We really need to get cracking here.”

  Kelly nodded as she picked up the radio headset on the console. “I know. I will.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After four days, SCEV Four finally crossed the California-Oregon border. They’d had to make a wide deviation to avoid the Interstate 5 bridge over Shasta Lake, which despite the apparent rupture of the tall dam to the west, was still a massive body of water. It took two days just to navigate around the lake and ford the rivers that fed it. Despite the rough terrain and the fast-running water, the rig performed like a champ. Even when pushing through water that came up almost to the forward viewports, the Self-Contained Exploration Vehicle did exactly what it had been designed to do.

  Almost as importantly, Leona was able to harvest samples of the water, thanks to the spray the SCEV kicked up. While the sample probe was located atop the SCEV’s mission equipment pod, it still vacuumed up enough material to analyze. Though the water was clearly contaminated by fallout and other pollutants, she reported that it wasn’t as lethal as bodies of water in the center of the nation around Harmony. In fact, the farther north they went, the overall effect of the nuclear war seemed to diminish. While a vast number of trees had died and their rotting husks lay about in great deadfalls, they saw substantial new growth. Some of the new trees already stood dozens of feet tall, and while many were stunted or misshapen, more were mostly vertical. But after almost five years of nuclear winter and the continual reduction of the ozone layer, the biosphere was slowly recovering.

  “So the habitat can support plant life,” Mulligan said. “I wonder about animal life. We should keep our eyes open. Might see some birds, at least.”

  “If we had time, we could take samples of the water itself,” Leona said.

  “You mean like fish? With what? My trusty spinning rod? Which I don’t actually have?” Mulligan asked.

  Andrews could practically hear Leona rolling her eyes as she spoke. “I mean water samples, as in from the body itself. We’re just capturing vapor right now, which is good, but a more substantive collection would give us insights into the chemical and biological balance of the lake itself. And yeah, we could probably tell if there are fish living in it, depending on the phosphate level.”

  “Shoot, we should just stop here for the night and keep our eyes open. If there are any fish out here, they’re probably still glowing. We might be able to see them jumping out of the water.”

  At this rate, we might have to. Andrews checked the course on the digital map. They were making worse time than before.

  “Nothing actually glows after it’s been irradiated, and especially vertebrate life,” Leona said. “Bioluminescence is pretty much a chemical reaction reserved for lower life forms, like jellyfish and some insects. Though some fish do have bioluminescent ability, I think they’re all deep-sea animals—saltwater, not freshwater.”

  Andrews and Mulligan exchanged wry looks. The things Leona knew.

  “If you say so, Professor.” Mulligan glanced at his display. One quadrant showed the local meteorological information, including the Sievert level. “Air quality isn’t bad, either. Radiation count is low enough to support at least some animal life, I’d bet.”

  “Maybe some animals, but for long-term human
habitation? It would still reduce your lifespan and give rise to a substantially higher cancer rate,” Leona told him. “If you go outside unprotected, you’ll be getting the equivalent of a chest X-ray every ten seconds. Yeah, it’s a lot better than what’s around Harmony or even San Jose, but there’s still substantial potential to corrupt chromosomes and inhibit or degrade cellular reproduction. You see some of the newer trees are obviously deformed. Right?”

  “Damn, Lee, you’re really bringing us down up here,” Andrews said as he maneuvered the rig over a rocky ridgeline. The rig swayed from side to side as old, fallen trees were crushed into dust beneath its tires. The sky was starting to fill with clouds. Mulligan leaned forward in his seat and examined the cloud cover as it rolled in.

  “Huh. Might get some rain.” He leaned back and looked at Andrews. “With our luck, the wiper motors will fail. Should I have Winters suit up and get a squeegee ready?”

  Andrews ignored the levity. “Yeah, we’re not exactly making up a ton of time here. I sure hope Jim doesn’t try to take that bridge.”

  “He’s a dope sometimes, but he’s not stupid.” Mulligan paused. “Wait, did I say that out loud? And if so, was I convincing?”

  “You’re becoming quite the card, Sarmajor.” The SCEV approached a clearing, and Andrews accelerated a bit. The big machine bumped along as it fairly raced through the clearing at twenty-five miles an hour.

  They spent the next two nights in the remnants of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, and the days were sullen and gray. By the time they managed to parallel Interstate 5 again, they found that the highway was almost completely empty. Stranded cars and trucks were everywhere, but it wasn’t a river of decaying metal and fiberglass as it had been to the south. Up north didn’t have as much traffic to begin with, so the electromagnetic pulses that had savaged the nation’s power grid and every other sensitive piece of equipment, such as computer-controlled vehicles, pretty much ensured the highways would remain empty for the foreseeable future. The pavement was chipped and cracked, and in some areas, great seams had formed from both water runoff and tectonic activity. None of these mattered to the SCEV, and it simply rolled over all of them without any trouble. To the rig’s right, the gigantic Mount Shasta loomed, its crown covered with snow that looked filthy. The mountain was still a lovely sight, and Andrews was awed by its stark beauty as it towered above the pine forests that struggled to survive.

  In the early afternoon of the fourth day, they made it to the interchange with US-97. KC was piloting the rig with Leona in the copilot’s seat, and Andrews left the engineering station to peer out the viewports.

  “Sarmajor, you mind watching things for a moment?”

  Mulligan sat at the command intelligence station without much to do other than ensure the timed measurement tasks Leona had configured ran as scheduled. “Sure.” Obviously happy to do it, he was more at home watching things like N1 and T5 readouts and performance graphs than counting millibars of pressure and worrying over external humidity.

  Andrews unbuckled his harness and knelt down in the cockpit doorway, grabbing onto a handhold as he watched KC slowly maneuver the rig onto the new route. She moved it slowly and deliberately, sitting up straight in her seat and craning her neck, trying to see everything at once. Leona did the same and helped guide her around a dead fuel tanker. As the rig rolled past it, Andrews saw that the truck’s cab was wide open. Everything had been removed from inside, even the seats and the floor mats.

  “Thing was looted,” he said. “Means people weren’t killed immediately. They still had time to scrounge.” He looked at the millimeter wave radar returns framed on the multifunction display in front of KC. Though it was mostly designed for ground navigation and avoidance, it also tracked moving objects and was sensitive enough to pick up a person walking, for instance, and would automatically bracket the information on the display and track it as long as the object was in range. But it picked up nothing. The rig was passing through the remains of Weed, California, as it rolled onto its new course, and nothing much was left. The town had died a slow, miserable death. It had been aptly named, for great clumps of yellow-green weeds had sprung up everywhere, standing from four to six feet tall. The houses looked filthy and desolate, with missing roof shingles and broken windows. Andrews glanced at the environmental window on Leona’s MFD. The radiation count was lower there than it had been in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest but not remarkably so. If the rig departed the highway and descended into the city proper, the radiation count would doubtless increase. Structures tended to hold on to radioactive particles longer than plant forms did, though the rains might have diluted the residue substantially. For a crazy moment, Andrews thought of ordering the rig to halt and leaning on the air horn for a few minutes, but the rig made enough racket all by itself. Gas turbine engines were hardly quiet, so if there had been anyone who was interested in inspecting the strange noise they heard, they would already be doing so. Another check of the MMR display told him no one was out there.

  Ah well.

  “Okay, what am I doing here?” KC asked suddenly. “Am I going around or what?”

  Andrews looked through the viewports. Ahead, several cars lay in a tangled heap on the ramp. Someone had probably been speeding down its length when the EMP hit and fried its systems, and the driver lost control. Three other cars had been caught up in the incident as well. Again, doors stood open, and as the rig drew nearer, Andrews could see the vehicles had been pillaged.

  “No room to go around,” Leona said. The off-ramp was buttressed by cement jersey barriers that conspired to make the exit more like a chute.

  “Push through them, girlfriend,” Andrews said. “Nice and easy. If they won’t move, go ahead and roll right over them. We’ve done this before.”

  “You’ve done this before. I haven’t,” KC said.

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine. The rig’s suspension will adjust automatically, so if you want to turn off the stabilization system so you can feel if we might roll over, go right ahead.”

  KC did that, reaching down and flipping a protected switch on the center console as she slowed the SCEV to a crawl. The first car she rolled up on was small, and the rig’s slanted nose went right over it. A moment later, the heavy vehicle shuddered slightly as it moved forward. From beneath them, they heard the distant squeal of crushing metal above the whine of the engines. KC added a bit of power, and the rig swayed slightly as it pressed on, flattening the cars beneath its tall, knobby tires.

  “How’s it feel to crush your enemies?” Andrews asked.

  “Not so bad, but it would suck if we were really moving when we hit these things,” KC replied. The vehicle shuddered again, and a crashing cacophony rose beneath it. “Oh, are we dragging one?”

  “It’s okay. It’ll fall away. Keep going,” Leona said. “Add a little more power. The wreckage’ll drift backward, and the rear tire set will yank it free.”

  KC did as instructed, and sure enough, the SCEV bounced and bumped as it threw the remains of the mangled car out from beneath it. Free of any encumbrance, the vehicle began to slowly accelerate. KC guided it down the ramp and onto US-97, a two-lane rural highway. Dead vehicles were scattered about so occasionally that she had to wend her way around them, but the route wasn’t terribly difficult. The disabled traffic began to thin out as the rig left the town of Weed behind.

  “Okay, good job, KC,” Andrews said. “According to the maps, we’ll be passing through what used to be agricultural land for the next couple of hours. Everything should be mostly flat and stable, so open it up a bit when you have stretches of clear road.”

  “Roger that. I know how you guys like to drive fast and all.”

  Andrews snorted and returned to the second compartment. Mulligan looked up at him forlornly from the engineering station and started unbuckling his harness, but Andrews waved him down.

  “I know you’re a gear head at heart, Sarmajor. You can stay on the engineering station
.”

  Mulligan inclined his head. “Every day is Christmas when you’re around, sir.”

  Ten minutes later, the two men looked toward the cockpit when they heard a tone sound. Through the open door, Andrews could see that the MMR had bracketed a moving target.

  Before he or Mulligan could inquire, Leona said, “Slow down! Slow down—it’s a bird!”

  “It’s a plane!” Mulligan said as the rig immediately slowed.

  It had been moving at a good forty miles per hour, tires whirring across the pavement. Andrews was puzzled. What the hell is Mulligan talking about?

  “No, Sarmajor, it’s definitely a bird,” KC said.

  Mulligan threw his hands in the air. “Jesus, what a waste. Damned kids don’t even know who Superman was.”

  Andrews unbuckled his harness and raced toward the cockpit as KC brought the rig to a crawl. He dropped down to his knees and squatted between the seats, mindful of the center console. “Where?”

  Leona pointed to the right, and Andrews leaned forward, peering through the side port. Sure enough, a black winged shape descended into a large field of swaying weeds and disappeared from view. He only caught a glimpse of it, but no one could mistake it for what it was—a fair-sized black bird.

  “Goddamn,” he said. “Where did it come from—do you know?”

  Leona pointed at the radar display. “According to the track, it took off in this field and flew about five hundred yards. Made a max altitude of two hundred seven feet, at a speed of thirty-seven miles per hour. Fast sucker.”

  “How big?”

  “Not big. Seven, eight inches long, maybe. But still a surprise!” Leona was clearly excited by the discovery.

  Mulligan cleared his throat from the second compartment. “I won’t say I told you so.”

  “You were right, old man. At least one bird survived,” Leona said, “but just to set expectations, it’s not glowing.”

  “Well, damn. Now that would have been a discovery,” Mulligan said.