The Apocalypse

by Gary Chesla

  Infection Z

  Gary Chesla

  July 2017

  Infection Z – The Apocalypse

  Mike and Tony were on a weekend getaway of drinking beer, playing cards and solving the world’s problems at Tony’s cabin when the end began.

  They had often discussed how fragile the world was.

  The world’s many unstable political leaders could throw the world into chaos at any time over something as simple as a someone waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

  The financial markets of the world were constantly on the brink of plunging the world into bankruptcy.

  Someone being late on their car payment could push the world into a major depression.

  Society was a mess.

  The police stopping a speeder was enough to have one group crying discrimination, resulting in large cities being brought to a standstill by riots and protesters.

  Mike and Tony claimed they wouldn’t be surprised to see the world come apart at the seams any day now.

  Even though they claimed that they wouldn’t be surprised to see the world self-destruct, when the end of the world came, at first, they didn’t recognize that the end had begun.

  What they saw happening around them was something they had never considered.

  It just wasn’t possible.

  They quickly discovered the one problem of the world that they didn’t have a solution for.

  And apparently, neither did anyone else.

  Three boys from Tennessee had joined the Navy with exciting expectations of seeing the world, just like the Navy had promised in their recruiting brochures.

  Instead of seeing the world, Seaman Rogers, Seaman Davis and Petty Officer Chervanak found themselves stationed at the Naval Air Station in Nevada.

  It was an important base out in the Nevada desert where the Navy tested many of the country’s most advanced aircraft and weapons and trained America’s best pilots.

  In the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert, they never had much of a chance to see the world.

  However, as they soon came to realize, their assignment in the Nevada desert gave them a front row seat to see the end of the world.

  Mike, and Tony never knew what happened, all they could do was just try to survive.

  The men stationed at the Naval Air Station in Nevada knew what had happened, but it didn’t seem that this knowledge would really make a difference?

  Petty Officer Chervanak and the men at Fallon fought desperately to find a way to survive.

  In their efforts to survive, they stumbled onto something that may not only allow them to survive, but could also save the future of the Human Race.

  Before the end began, they all knew that there were many ways the world could end.

  But the one question none of them had thought about before was, “Would there be any way to survive?”

  It was a hard question to answer when you had no way of knowing how the world would end.

  It became an even harder question to answer when they found out what was destroying mankind and the world.

  Chapter 1

  Thursday, May 6th, Fallon Naval Air Station, Fallon, Nevada.

  Seaman Rogers looked at his hand.

  Two kings, two nines and a seven of clubs.

  “I’ll raise you fifty bucks,” Seaman Davis smiled as he tossed fifty bucks on the pile of wrinkled bills already on the middle of the desk.

  Roger’s looked at Davis, studied his eyes and thought, “The bastard is bluffing. He can’t be that lucky, not again.”

  They had been playing cards for the past two hours to help pass the time.

  It had started out as a friendly game with them betting toothpicks, but as it usually did, the game developed into a competitive battle with higher stakes required to back up their words and egos.

  Satellite duty, or “Dancing with the Stars” as the men called it, was the most boring job at the base.

  The job consisted of watching a computer monitor as the system tracked the various satellites in space as they passed over the United States mainland.

  The Airforce had similar stations on the east and west coasts, but in the middle of the U.S. the job was given to the Navy’s aviation training and test facility in the Nevada dessert.

  It wasn’t a job one would normally associate with the Navy, but with the type of facilities and equipment that they had at Fallon, they were assigned the job in order to maintain a continuous coverage over the entire country.

  Their job was just to watch and report anything unusual.

  It was a simple job, the computers did most of the work, all they had to do was wait and watch.

  Simple, yes. Boring, absolutely.

  As more and more countries entered the space age, the number of satellites orbiting the earth had dramatically increased.

  Russia and China had many so-called communication satellites in orbit, as did the United States.

  A new weather satellite or communications satellite was being sent into orbit by someone every few months.

  Whatever they called them, the U.S. knew that most of them were spy satellites, sent into space for the purpose of trying to monitor or pick up whatever sensitive information that they could find.

  It was against international law to militarize space, but everyone knew it was happening.

  A few years ago, when the cell phone network in the U.S. suffered a day long blackout which had been blamed on solar flares, the systems at the Fallon Air Station said that there was a different reason for the outage.

  The Chinese were testing a new military satellite and were probably trying to send the U.S. a veiled message.

  The U.S. military was becoming more and more dependent on satellite communications to control their high-tech weapons systems and to coordinate their numerous assets around the world.

  The Chinese were looking for a way, in case of a conflict with the United States, to cripple the U.S. military systems.

  It was probably their way of telling the U.S. not to feel too confident.

  The new U.S. F-35 Stealth Fighter’s high-tech systems could identify, track and target every enemy aircraft in the sky, naval vessel on the surface below and every anti-aircraft battery on the ground for hundreds of miles.

  The F-35 would then beam by satellite all the information and battlefield scenarios to all allied assets in the area.

  This would give the U.S. a major advantage should any confrontation develop.

  Every U.S. weapons system would be working together with a complete vision of the battlefield.

  The U.S. forces would have targeting information and be able to begin their attack before the enemy would even know they had been identified and targeted.

  The high-tech system could give live action battle plan adjustments to all assets during the battle.

  It was a level of situational awareness and coordination of information and weapons systems unheard of before.

  The Chinese were scrambling to find a way to keep up or to at least neutralize this U.S. advantage.

  The Chinese knew that they might be lucky enough to locate one of the stealthy F-35s. If they could locate one of the F-35s, it could be possible to jam that plane’s systems.

  However, since it would be impossible to locate and jam all the F-35s at the same time, the network would still be operating and the jammed F-35 could just switch to receive information from the network and continue its mission as if nothing had happened.

  The Chinese had been looking for a way to disable the entire network to blind all the U.S. forces.

  Fortunately, the U.S. military didn’t use the cell phone system networks.

  The U.S. military had a separate, hardened and much more secure system that was a lot more difficult to disru
pt.

  But the cyber warfare game of chess between nations was constantly and actively probing for weaknesses and opportunities.

  The Russian’s, it had been rumored, had a fleet of satellites armed with nuclear missiles.

  Then there were the satellite killer vehicles in orbit whose job was to attempt to destroy the other countries orbiting assets in case of a conflict.

  Satellite killers also served another purpose, in the event one country just wanted to send a message or eliminate another country’s satellite without creating an international incident, a space accident could occur, if the offending satellite became too nosey.

  Some satellites were created to ram into enemy satellites, others were armed with solid projectiles that were meant to damage or destroy their targets quietly.

  High tech solutions were being developed in the event of a major confrontation and low-tech solutions for quiet, more subtle uses.

  Space was for peaceful research, communication and exploration.

  That was what the public had been told, but reality was often much different than what the general population could ever imagine.

  The reality was that at least half of the objects in orbit were there for purposes other than what had been advertised.

  It was the job of the men at Fallon Station, or at least one of their many jobs, to keep an eye on what the satellites in orbit that passed over this part of the U.S. were up to.

  Their orbits were analyzed and they were scanned for any sign of electrical emissions that could be used to communicate with something that they shouldn’t be trying to talk to.

  What would happen then if something unusual was observed?

  The men whose job it was to watch for these anomalies weren’t given that information.

  That information was above their pay grade, but they assumed that the U.S. had a satellite in orbit that would take care of that situation by frying the circuits of the offending satellite or maybe by just accidentally crashing into it and eliminating the threat.

  The job was obviously important, but it was also boring, at least for the men that had to sit and stare at the monitoring screens for hours on end and wait to see something unusual or suspicious taking place.

  Playing cards was the usual form of entertainment during the long boring shifts.

  As far as Rogers and Davis knew, there had never been a reported case of anything unusual being observed at the station.

  That didn’t mean nothing had ever happened.

  All it meant was that they had never been told about anything unusual being reported.

  They were sure the computers were documenting and reporting every minute detail about what was going on in space above the U.S.

  But, if there had been anything reported, they knew that they were not in the chain of communications that needed to know about it.

  The military was big on only giving people information on a need to know basis.

  Apparently in their entire military careers, there had never been anything that they needed to know.

  Rogers and Davis were OK with this. As far as they were concerned, the less they knew the better.

  They wanted to put in their time and get out of the Navy with a full pension and then get on with their lives.

  Knowing too much resulted in responsibilities, headaches, ulcers and tons of paperwork, none of which held any interest for either of them.

  The only reason they had volunteered for this boring job in the first place was for the air conditioning.

  Fallon was in the Nevada desert where the temperatures frequently exceeded one hundred and twenty degrees.

  Being in the air conditioning was a hell of a lot better than sweating their asses off out in one of the hot airplane hangars.

  They had hoped when they joined the Navy, that they would spend their career on an aircraft carrier, somewhere out in the middle of the cool waters of the Pacific, but the Navy didn’t feel they had the necessary skills for work aboard a carrier or a destroyer.

  The Navy however had need of bodies here at their training and test facility in Fallon Nevada.

  So here they were.

  It wasn’t so bad, but whenever they spoke with their friends and family back home in Tennessee, all they said was they were in the Navy on special assignment at an undisclosed location.

  That helped them avoid answering a lot of questions that they preferred to avoid.

  When home on leave, they wore long sleeves to cover the cactus tattoos they had on their biceps instead of the anchor tattoo preferred by most of the men in the Navy.

  Getting cactus tattoos had seemed like the thing to do at the time.

  It wasn’t as amusing the next morning when they woke up with a hangover and stared at them through bloodshot eyes.

  But they both had agreed, it could have been worse.

  Seaman Rogers reached in his pocket and dug out two fresh twenties and an old ten and tossed them onto the table.

  “Davis, I think you’re bluffing,” Roger’s said as he tossed the seven of clubs down on the pile, “I’ll take one card and I’ll call your bluff.”

  Davis smiled and slide a new card towards Rogers.

  Rogers picked up the card.

  He had an uneasy feeling as he watched the grin on Davis’s face.

  “What the hell did Davis have?”

  He turned over his new card, it was a damn seven of hearts.

  “Shit,” Rogers thought, “but hey, at least I have two pair. It’s better than I had last time. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  Davis turned over his cards, four aces and a queen, then laughed as he scooped up the money from the center of the desk.

  Rogers watched the last of this week’s paycheck disappear.

  If this had been the old west and if Davis hadn’t been his best friend, Rogers would have probably accused him of cheating and challenged Davis to a duel to get his money back.

  This was the second time this month he had lost his entire paycheck playing cards.

  It made for a long week waiting until the next payday.

  It also meant, more importantly, that he would have to go for the rest of the week without a beer.

  Davis surprised Rogers when he stood and walked over to Rogers and handed him his fifty bucks.

  “Sorry Rogers,” Davis said. “I shouldn’t have raised you fifty bucks. I know this is your last fifty dollars, and I guess I got carried away when I saw those four aces in my hand. I’ve never had a hand that good before. Having four aces, I knew I couldn’t lose. But I would feel like I was stealing your money if I kept your last fifty dollars.”

  “Hey, I’m the dumbass that bet my last fifty, you won it fair and square,” Rogers sighed.

  “Honest man,” Davis smiled, “I can’t take your last fifty, not like this. Besides, we were just supposed to be playing for fun to pass the time. If it makes you feel better, you can buy the drinks in Fallon this weekend at Charlie’s Bar.”

  Rogers laughed, “I think I would be better off with you keeping the fifty and then you buy all the drinks this weekend.”

  “I see your point,” Davis chuckled. “Fifty dollars won’t last very long down at Charlies.”

  Davis and Rogers stopped talking and turned towards the monitor when the computer suddenly beeped and the printer began to hum, spitting out sheets of paper onto the tray in front of the printer.

  “Shit, this is something new,” Rogers said as he got up and walked over to the printer. He picked up the report and looked it over. “I never saw it do anything like this before.”

  “What does it say?” Davis asked.

  “Something about satellite ID #77127 changing course,” Rogers replied. “It looks like a bunch of numbers that could be the longitude and latitude of something.”

  “Who does 77127 belong to?” Davis asked. “Is there some kind of satellite ID chart around here?”

  “Nah, that would be above our need to know,” Rogers laughed. “All we need to know is
how to call the Chief if anything happens.”

  “How are we supposed to know if this is important enough to bother the Chief? He might chew our asses if we wake him up this late over nothing.” Davis asked. “Maybe it’s just some kind of normal harmless course adjustment. Have any of the defense systems gone active?”

  “I don’t think so, but what the hell do I know,” Rogers replied, “I better call the Chief. He keeps reminding me that I don’t get paid to think. Thinking is for officers.”

  “Davis laughed, “Even if it is important, I’m glad you are making the call and not me. Every time I have to talk to him, I end up with latrine duty.”

  Rogers smiled as he picked up the phone and punched in the number for the Chief’s quarters.

  “Johnson here,” a groggy voice answered after a few rings.

  “Chief,” Rogers said, “I hate to wake you this time of night, but the computer started spitting out some kind of report about a satellite changing course. I don’t know what all these numbers mean, but I thought I had better let you know that something is happening. I never saw the computer do something like this before, so I thought it could be important.”

  “Very good Rogers,” Chief Johnson replied, “Call Petty Officer Chervanak and have him meet me at your station in ten minutes.”

  “Yes Sir,” Rogers replied as the phone went dead in his ear.

  “What did the Chief say?” Davis asked.

  “Well, he wasn’t pissed off that I woke him up,” Rogers replied as he punched in more numbers on the phone. “He told me to call Chervy to meet him here in ten minutes. You better get rid of those cards before the Chief gets here and sees them.”

  “Hey Chervy, Rogers here,” Rogers said into the phone, “Something’s happening with some satellite. The Chief wants you to meet him here in ten.”