Hatcher was a lot smaller than a golden retriever, especially curled into a ball in one corner of the cage while clutching a thin blanket. Molly wheeled on Henry, unable to suppress her anger any longer. “You monster! What’s wrong with you?”
He smiled again, but this expression seemed more genuine, as though he actually enjoyed the interplay. “Take it easy, girl. There’s a lot of delicate—and dangerous! —equipment in here. It’s for his own protection. This is a very sensitive installation, in a number of ways.”
“He’s three years old, for God’s sake!”
“That’s why he’s here,” Henry said, his voice calm. He pointed, and his voice took a sharper tone. “Sit.”
Shaking, she rolled the chair out from against the wall and put it as close to Hatch as she could get while still remaining out of the doctor’s immediate reach. His smile widened, and she got the sense that he knew exactly what she’d done, and why.
Leaning against the table once more, Henry said, “This will take a bit of explanation, but bear with me. Why do you think I and the people outside are up here, on this mountain?”
Molly debated whether to say the words, then blurted, “You’re responsible for what happened, and you’re hiding out here until things blow over.”
He chuckled a bit. “Well, you’re right about the first half. But I certainly didn’t plan on staying up here. Although, in a way, that worked out quite well for you, hmm?” Henry cocked his head, but she didn’t respond. “My … organization, I suppose you could say, and I are responsible for the outbreak. It’s not any virus that you’d recognize, but rather an expression of miniaturized machines called nanites.”
“The gray stuff,” she guessed.
Henry raised an eyebrow. “You got close enough to see it and you’re uninfected? Good for you.”
Thinking of Dave made tears well in her eyes, so she settled for a shrug.
“This building controls the transmission equipment that turned the nanites on, all around the world. I was here to push the button, of course—I’d hate to leave such a momentous task to something so simple as a timer.” He crossed his arms and shook his head. “That was the most complex part of the plan, and it worked to perfection. Flip the switch, load up with my security detail, and head for the hills. I’ve got a private airstrip, you see, outside of Annapolis.” The smaller town was about twenty miles south of Taum Sauk—Molly had played some of her best games versus South Iron High. “We have a fully-stocked A320 waiting to carry us to—” Henry caught himself, as though realizing he’d said too much. “Our destination,” he continued. “I planned for everything but bad luck. The damn pilot died on takeoff! Just an ordinary heart attack, but by the time the copilot got the plane under control, he snagged a wingtip on the fence. We’d made enough noise loading up to attract some attention. With the way open, they overran the airfield and we had no way of taking off. Our only option was to return to our vehicles and retreat.” He shook his head. “When I say that worked out well for you, I mean this—if we’d taken off as scheduled, I never would have powered up the secondary antenna to create an exclusion effect. There would have been no safe haven for you or any of the folk down in the valley.” He threw back his head and laughed. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
The groping by the guards had been bad enough, but this was far worse if only for the sheer insanity of it all. She could understand garden-variety misogyny, but mirth against the backdrop of the death of billions of people? “Why are you telling me all this?” Molly was hesitant to ask, but the need to know why overcame her instincts of self-preservation.
“In many ways, I’m as much a prisoner here as you, young lady. The problem of employing men without principles is that they occasionally disappoint you with actual principle. A few of the contractors have the nanovirus. Without the exclusion zone or the portable system I cobbled together for one of the trucks, they have no way of leaving without turning. Esprit de corps requires them to ‘leave no man behind’, so until I can resolve that situation, here we sit. Which is where our young man comes into play.”
“What do you mean?”
He plucked a plastic cylinder from a basket on the table and held it up. There was a push-button on one end and a removable cap on the other. “It would be the height of idiocy to spread a worldwide plague without a cure. But I have a limited number of doses, and the equipment to produce more is well out of reach. I am forced, then, to pursue alternative methods.”
Molly looked from the cylinder to Hatcher. “I don’t understand.”
“Animal testing didn’t prove to be feasible; I designed the nanites to work only in human beings. But I’m already seeing promising results in using the little guy as an incubator, of sorts. If my calculations are correct, in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to extract sufficient doses from his blood to cure all of my injured men.”
“If—if you needed a lab rat, why not use yourself? Or one of the healthy soldiers?”
He blinked, looking honestly baffled that she’d even asked the question. “None of us wished to do it, of course. From what I understand, your neighbors were all as uncooperative as your parents. You and your little brother are my only options—and let’s be honest, he’s much more manageable than you’d be, isn’t he?” He grinned. “Besides, with the doses I’ve given him, the side effects will be—interesting, shall we say?” Henry caught her look and added, “Nothing fatal, of course. But the same side effects would be far more pronounced in an older subject.”
“Why? Why do any of this?”
He scoffed at her disdain. “You have me entirely wrong. A hundred years from now, what remains of humanity will inherit a healthier, cleaner planet. We’re starting over, my dear, but forearmed with the knowledge of just how destructive our old ways are. Strip-mining, clear-cutting forests—dumping trash in the oceans! Our world is a precious gift, and we’ve treated it like a toilet. Yes, the throes of a dying civilization will make things worse, for a time, but Mother Earth is resilient. She’ll recover.” He crouched and patted the top of the cage. “I’m not the monster you think I am. I had a brother too, you know. Oh, how our parents doted over him. A literal Boy Scout. It’s a shame he’s not around to see this. I can’t help but feel he’d respect my achievement, even if he didn’t agree with the reasoning behind it.”
“Did you . . . kill him?”
“Oh, no. Well, not directly. I imagine he got his flu shot like a good little boy. I suppose there’s a chance that he’s still alive, but . . . twins know. Twins know.” Henry bounced back to his feet. “I’ll make a deal with you, young Molly. You help me get what I need, keep Hatcher calm so I can cure the mercenaries, and we’ll be on our way. We can leave for the airport, fix the fence, and clear the runway and you’ll never see us again.” He winked. “If you’re a good girl, I’ll even leave the antenna on, so you two have a nice big safe place to grow old in. What do you say?”
She stared at him, then glanced at Hatcher. It won’t kill him, right? It can’t, for Henry to get what he wants. She thought about Jenkins, hard faces, harsh laughter, and what might happen to her if the doctor decided she was no longer useful.
Molly swallowed, and even though it felt like signing a pact with a demon straight from hell, she whispered, “Okay.”
She hoped that Hatch would understand her decision one day—if they both survived this.
October 18, 2026
Over Terre Haute, Indiana
Z-Day + 3,287
Once she’d completed the southwest leg, Repko almost didn’t need the inertial navigation system. All she had to do was follow Interstate 70 straight to the heart of downtown St. Louis. The thin column of black smoke rising into the otherwise crystal-clear sky was easier to follow than the highway. In many areas, the greenery of nine years covered the blacktop. The only sign of man’s former dominion over the ground below were the occasional weed-choked rectangles of cars and trucks.
She glanced at the stopwatch she’d taped t
o her lapboard; the plane was a bit past the halfway point to the drop zone. “Gateway, this is Hellcat. ETA twenty-five minutes. Mighty nice of you boys to put on a barbecue for us, over.”
“We’ve got the popcorn ready and we’re waiting for the show, Hellcat.”
She grinned. “I’m loaded for bear, boys, so it’s apt to be a good one. Hellcat out.”
Repko gave the instruments a once-over to make sure everything was still in working order. All the reassigned pilots had all gotten plenty of flight hours over the past few months, and she’d gone over diagrams of the instrument panel enough times to see it in her sleep. Despite all that, the experience for most of the pilots paled in comparison to their time-in-type on their old airframes.
If there was a good—and forgiving—plane to learn, though, it was the A-10. The Warthog didn’t feel as nimble and responsive as her old Super Hornet, but she wasn’t about to complain because the thing was literally a flying tank, both in terms of the firepower it carried and construction. After nearly a decade of being stuck on a boat, she was ready to get up-close, relatively-speaking, and kick some ass again.
The air distance from Kellys Island to St. Louis and back was a bit longer than the typical flight range of the A-10. The external fuel tank on the ‘hog’s centerline pylon ensured that she had enough flight time to get back to base with a safety margin for strafing runs. A single, seven-shot rocket pod hung on each wing, flanked on either side by a quadruple mount of GBU-39 laser-guided small-diameter bombs. If that ordnance wasn’t enough to wreak havoc, she had a full magazine of 30mm anti-tank rounds for the massive cannon the designers of the A-10 had built the craft around. Bright, freshly-painted white fangs decorated the nose around the muzzle—the ground crews had made time to work on the finish even though it wasn’t on the schedule. Repko doubted zulu would understand the image, even if they noticed it, but that wasn’t the point.
The Warthog was ugly and inelegant. Then again, so was the war.
She banked back and forth, describing an S-turn and angling the cockpit to check the ground. The plane’s terrain avoidance system would scream at her if she descended below a thousand feet AGL, but she still felt more than a little claustrophobic at twice that altitude. Even that was lower than the norm for a Super Hornet.
It’s all a matter of perspective, of course—and it beats walking. Baby steps.
Motion below drew her attention. Repko craned her neck to get a better look. “Shit,” she muttered, then keyed her radio. “Gateway, I’m a hundred miles out, and I’ve spotted a horde headed in your direction. I think your smoke signals are a bit too effective, over.”
The Marine on the other end came back after a short pause. “Roger that, Hellcat. Can you get a hard number?”
She scoffed but didn’t transmit it. “I can dive down and do a head-count, Gateway, but it’s a shit-ton of them. They’re following the Interstate for the most part, and the line’s a couple of miles long, at least. Coming out of Terre Haute and Effingham, I guess.” She considered the ordnance under her wings, then said, “I can strafe them, but I’d be wasting accuracy with the GBUs.”
“Wait one.”
I ain’t going anywhere, Jarhead. Shaking her head, she settled for, “Roger.”
After the Marines got done thumping their chests, or however it was they settled things, they came back. “Negative—we’ve got them packed in tight, here—that’s a better use of your ordnance. Following flights to observe and update on progress.”
“Roger that.” She flipped over to a different frequency. “Stampede, Hellcat—you in the air, yet? Over.”
Lieutenant Commander Branson’s voice came in loud and clear. “Just took off, Hellcat. ETA to drop zone, sixty-five minutes to tag you out.”
She explained the situation on the ground and the Marines’ requests.
“Copy that, I’ll pass the word back to base. Figure foot speed of what, five miles an hour? Maybe we’ll have everything wrapped up by then.”
“Don’t jinx it,” she warned, and Branson laughed.
“If they look to be making too much progress, we’ll swap out the precision ordnance on one of the ‘hogs over to rockets or Mark 82s. Cluster bombs would come in handy, right about now.”
“While you’re wishing for stuff, I’d like a pony and a squadron of B-52s.”
“Carpet bombing is a beautiful thing.”
“Guess we’ll just have to do what we can with what we’ve got—Hellcat, out.”
October 18, 2026
Approaching Taum Sauk Mountain, eastern Missouri
Z-Day + 3,287
Sandy, Miles decided, was looking a little green. “You feeling okay? Airsick?”
The doc shook his head. “No, just nervous.” He pointed at Sergeant Lawrence. The scarred Marine had his head resting on one shoulder, the light buzz of his snoring barely audible over the drone of the propellers. “How do you think he does it?”
“Benefit of long experience,” Miles said. “You need to pee?”
Sandy blinked at him. “What?”
“Seriously, use the bathroom before we hit the ground. You don’t want to have an accident and be stuck in wet pants during a fight.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Sandy scoffed. “Remind me to tell you about using myself as bait on the end of a rope, sometime.”
Miles grinned and winked. “There you go. You’re looking better already, Doc.”
“Dick.”
“Usually,” Miles agreed. “Comes from being right all the time. It’s a curse.”
“That must be terrible for your wife,” Sandy said, deadpan.
“She taught me everything I know.” Miles unbuckled his restraints and stood. “Be right back.”
The view through the cockpit was much better than the one through the small windows lining the sides of the cargo container. As he leaned on the back of his uncle’s seat, the impression he got was a vast panorama of gold and red. Autumn had come to the woods of eastern Missouri, and while he understood the psychological reasoning behind the choice of today to kick off the operation, he was glad they hadn’t delayed any longer, else they might have had snow to deal with.
“Pretty,” he remarked. Close to home, the trees came in small bunches surrounded by rolling fields. The leaves turned, but the overall impact wasn’t the same. Further west, closer to Bloomington, they had trees like this—but tens of thousands of undead Indiana University students made appreciating the scenery problematic.
Pete just grunted, comparing a paper map to a readout on his display he’d cloned from one at Guglik’s station. “Getting close.”
“There it is, right about ten o’clock,” she pointed out.
Miles leaned over and looked. “That’s a mountain?” It looked, more than anything, like a green hump in the landscape, and was well below even their relatively low height.
“They don’t make ‘em big in this part of the country,” Pete said with a grin. “If you’re not happy with the view, I can—”
They both turned to look at Guglik’s station as a warning buzzer sounded. At the same time, a red light began flashing on one of her displays.
“What,” Pete said calmly, “is that?”
“Tracking radar,” Guglik said. “I think—needless to say, that icon hasn’t lit up, before.”
“Oh, shit!” Hyatt, the copilot shouted. “Look!”
On top of the mountain, lines of smoke shot into the sky. Just as quickly, several of them veered off at oblique angles, heading for the ground, but three of the lines headed straight up, angled in the direction of the Orca.
“Damn,” Pete said. “Stingers, I guess. There’s an anti-aircraft variant of the Humvee with an eight-shot launcher. Someone just shot their wad at us.”
Miles held onto the headrest in front of him as Guglik shoved the throttles to the redline and banked the Orca away from Taum Sauk. “Hold on!” There were cries from the cargo compartment, but everyone up front was too busy to care.
“We’re okay,” Pete muttered. “They’re heatseekers, and we’ve been running on batteries for hours. Shouldn’t be much hotter than ambient—there!”
The tumbling cylinder that passed a half-mile in front of the Orca no longer emitted exhaust, but its black outline was still evident against the clear sky. “They’re old,” Guglik guessed. “Old motors, old missiles—who knows if they’ve been properly maintained. I think we just lucked—”
There was a subtle popping sound from somewhere above their heads, and then a louder bang from the cargo deck followed by a scream and a sudden hiss of rushing wind. “Medic!” one of the Marines shouted. Miles twisted around, but all he could see was frantic men rushing around and sprays of blood.
“Shit,” he managed, as he turned back. “Cargo bay looks intact.”
Guglik tapped buttons on one of her touchscreen displays. Her shoulders sagged before she spoke. “Yeah, because it went through the gas bag before the warhead went off. That soaked up some of the damage, but the blast ruptured the cell.”
“How bad?” Pete said.
“We’re going down. We’ll reach negative buoyancy at any moment.” As if brought to reality by her words, Miles felt the deck shift beneath his feet.
“Do what you can,” Pete said. “We’re headed north? Push it, see if you can get us in a direct line of the camp. That should put us in the exclusion zone so we don’t get swarmed.”
“I’m more worried about pancaking in an overgrown cornfield, but yeah—I get you.”
Pete raised his voice to overcome the shouting in the back of the cargo compartment. “Brace positions! We’re going down!” He turned to look at Miles, eyes haunted. “Best strap in, son.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
October 18, 2026
St. Louis, Missouri
Z-Day (Book 3): A Place For War Page 26