by A. G. Riddle
“Maybe remnants of the ejecta that fell back to the ground,” Grigory says.
“It could have mixed with part of the solar panels.”
“If so, it might have given off toxic fumes when forming,” Grigory says absently, still rubbing the substance on his fingers.
“True. Something to think about for the survivors.”
We dig in silence after that, the smell of death all around us, neither of us acknowledging it. Occasionally, we pause to catch our breath and warm our hands. I try the satellite phone and radio every time. Grigory calls out for Lina.
Neither of us gets an answer.
So we keep digging.
I grab one end of a hard-plastic wall and Grigory grabs the other and we heave it off the stack. Below is a metal table with a flat-screen display in the middle, shattered. Grigory stares at it. He recognizes it. I do too—it’s from our team room. If Lina was in the mission control room, we’re close.
We take the table and haul it out of the rubble and keep digging. If this building had been made in the conventional way, like the ones in America, with steel and concrete, drywall and wood, there’s no way we would be able to dig through it this quickly by hand. But the buildings in Camp Seven were erected quickly, made from mass-produced, lightweight materials. Strong materials, ones that don’t shatter and or break easily.
I scoop up pieces of a whiteboard and toss them away from the pile. A few days ago, we were writing on this board, tweaking our plan to stop those three large asteroids. Now we’re picking up the pieces—literally, because we missed the true attack.
I missed it.
With each piece of wreckage I pick up, I can’t help thinking: without NASA, what chance do we have? Maybe the Caspians or the Pac Alliance have a command center that no one knew about that survived this.
The truth is, we have to get up into space and start fighting the new harvester. More importantly: we need to know what we’re dealing with. And who’s left to fight it.
I feel a faint wetness fall on my ears, something in my hair. I look up and realize sandy-brown snow flurries are floating down all around us. It’s truly winter again, and it’s cold enough for the snow to stick to the ground and take hold.
“James!” Grigory yells as he begins digging furiously, throwing a mangled office chair out of the way, a battered tablet after, and then a model spaceship, which scatters across the rubble.
At his feet, I see an article of clothing: blue pants. Grigory lifts a cubicle divider revealing a hand, then an arm. I rush to him and reach into the debris, tossing away a computer screen and keyboard, uncovering a torso.
The person isn’t moving. Or breathing.
Grigory reaches up and pushes the desk away. Our headlamps shine down like searchlights from above, illuminating the man’s bloody, lacerated face.
He’s one of the control technicians for the orbital defense array. I can’t remember his name. Maybe Thomas. Or Travis. Nice guy. He probably stayed to try to optimize the array’s defense. I bet he did the math and figured if he could take out at least one more asteroid, that would be worth it. His life for thousands.
“Should we…” Grigory begins but trails off, eyes lingering on the body.
I shuffle over and grab the man’s feet. “Let’s just move him out of the rubble for now.”
By the time we’ve stumbled across the pile and laid our colleague on the ground, it’s the dead of night, the only light that from our headlamps.
I’m cold and hungry and tired, more tired than I’ve been in a long, long time. But we keep digging.
The snow soon forms a blanket on the rubble, making it slippery as we step across. The cold wind cuts through me, down deep, making me shiver. I keep going, lifting tables and walls and screens and chairs and keyboards, hands trembling, cheeks cold and chapped by the wind. I grit my teeth and bear it because Grigory is my friend and so is Lina and this is what we have to do right now.
Oscar won’t be back for at least twelve hours. Unless he manages to get through the passage above the aquifer and the tunnel faster.
We find another body. And another. Each time, my heart leaps and each time it crashes when my fingers touch their cold, lifeless skin. Little by little, it becomes apparent what we’ll find in this pile of misery.
Grigory and I are both exhausted and freezing. We take more frequent breaks, sitting next to each other, rubbing our hands, breath coming out in white wisps that drift through our headlamps like ghosts rising from the rubble. But Grigory pushes on. I’m about to ask him to stop, to make the well-reasoned plea that I’ve rehearsed a dozen times in my mind, when we find her.
It’s clear that Lina was indeed in mission control when she died. I recognize the desk dividers and the workstations. I found a piece of the large wall screen shortly before Grigory uncovered her arm. He recognized the long-sleeve T-shirt instantly.
I stand there for a long moment and watch as he stares at her body. I expect him to break down. I would. But he simply reaches out and gently removes the items covering her and brushes the dirt and soot from her face and hair and takes her hands and places them over her chest. I step closer and, in his eyes, I see a simmering rage so strong I feel it could literally tear him into a thousand pieces. And I feel it too.
It takes the last bit of strength I have to help Grigory load Lina into the back of the electric car.
Weary and cold, I instruct the car to drive over to the CENTCOM building, which is a hundred yards from the remains of Olympus. They designed CENTCOM as a sprawling, three-story building with a courtyard in the middle, similar to the Pentagon before the glaciers of the Long Winter trampled it. And like the Pentagon before it, the Atlantic Union’s CENTCOM headquarters is a sprawling wasteland now.
The building’s designers had the foresight to build a massive bunker adjacent to it, reinforced to withstand a direct airstrike. The thinking was that they could retreat there if hostilities with the Caspians or the Pac Alliance broke out. The plan was for the bunker to be stocked with everything you’d need to fight a war: weapons, food, armor, and, importantly for our current situation, drones. I just hope stocking the facility wasn’t overlooked in the last two years as we planned to defend against the large asteroids.
It’s clear that parts of the bunker are collapsed, mainly around the periphery. Ruins of the CENTCOM building lie below ground level like piles of trash thrown in a gulley. That’s probably why they didn’t evacuate anyone to the bunker—they weren’t sure if it would survive the asteroid, or, if it did, what parts would come through the impact.
Luckily for us, one of the bunker sections that survived has a working entrance ramp, and it lies open from Oscar’s previous entry.
I take manual control of the car and guide it into the tunnel. The overhead lights snap on as we emerge from the tunnel. I’m relieved that we have power down here. I’m assuming that’s thanks to a battery backup. If so, those batteries were likely charged by solar panels that sat atop CENTCOM. Those solar panels are gone, and soon, the power in the batteries will be gone. We need to set up an array of solar panels to recharge them. But one thing at a time.
One side of the bunker looks like a garage, with troop carriers, armored vehicles, and more lightweight cars like the all-terrain unit we’re driving. Another one of the swift all-terrain vehicles is gone—the one Oscar retrieved while we were digging at NASA. It’s no doubt sitting by the entrance to the aquifer now.
There are several pieces of earth-moving equipment, including a large excavator, a giant bulldozer, and several attachments for the excavator, including a hydraulic hammer and thumb. These massive machines were no doubt used to build the CENTCOM bunker and the planners chose to leave them here in case the entrances to the bunker had been caved in. They left themselves a way to dig out. And now those machines may be the key to getting everyone out of the Citadel.
Glancing around, I take stock of the rest of the facility. There are three rooms off the open area: a small med ba
y with an operating room, a situation room filled with inactive screens, and a large mechanical room with a small water treatment plant and an air purification system.
The other side of the open area is filled with crates and racks full of supplies, including what I had hoped we’d find: weapons, drones, armor, communications gear, and MREs —Meals, Ready-to-Eat.
I’m starving and weak, and I want to rush to the ration bins, but first Grigory and I take Lina’s body to a troop carrier and gently place her on one of the long benches in the back. Grigory sits beside her, staring. I retrieve a thick blanket from a supply crate, drape it over her, and leave him alone, closing the door of the troop carrier behind me.
I break out the MREs and wolf one down, barely stopping to breathe. The troop carrier’s rear door swings open and Grigory steps down, his eyes still moist and bloodshot. I open an MRE, start the heating element, and hand it to him. We don’t speak a word as we eat. We’re both too tired and too overwhelmed. Shivering in the cold depot, we eat in silence.
When we’re full, I set a space heater in another troop carrier and line the floor with blankets and sleeping bags. Sleeping in the situation room might be more comfortable, but space in the vehicle is smaller and easier to heat.
“What now?” Grigory asks.
“We need to get some rest. When Harry gets here, we’ll firm up our plan and start digging at the crater.”
Grigory nods and heads for our troop carrier.
A thought occurs to me. “Actually, there’s something else we can do before they get here.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Search for survivors.”
“How?”
“There’s probably some surveillance drones with infrared capability down here. I’ll set them up to do a full survey of the camp. We’ll sleep while they fly over.”
Even if someone out there survived the blast wave, they’ve been buried for four days, likely without food. It’s a long shot, but I can’t go to sleep knowing we’re not at least looking for anyone who needs help.
When the drones are in the air and transmitting data back to our control station, Grigory and I climb into the armored troop carrier and slip into the sleeping bags. I set my alarm for three hours. That’s about how long the survey drones will take.
I wake to hands on my shoulders gripping me, pushing me into the floor, shaking me, shouting.
My face is still bruised and aching from the elbow I took before the asteroid impact. The rest of my body feels even worse from the climb out of the aquifer and the digging at Olympus.
In the darkness, I realize it’s Grigory shaking me, the words he’s uttering Russian, probably curse words.
My phone alarm is blaring.
“You set a code on your alarm?” Grigory mutters when he realizes I’m awake.
I roll over and tap the six digits into the phone and it silences. “Yeah, it ensures it actually wakes me.”
“No, it only ensures that it wakes me.”
We pile out of the troop carrier and over to the drone control case. It’s about the size of a briefcase, with a control panel in one half, a touchscreen on the other. The screen shows a map of Camp Seven with layers for satellite and infrared imagery. I switch to infrared and feel a surge of hope.
Life signs.
I count twenty-six. All buried beneath the habitats. That surprises me. Like the other camps in the Atlantic Union, Camp Seven has warehouses and greenhouses around the periphery, beyond the habitats. From the drone survey, it’s obvious that the warehouses and greenhouses were all taken down in the blast. I had hoped at least one or two of the facilities at the side of the camp opposite the blast wave might have survived, and that we would find survivors there. No such luck.
Twenty-six survivors. I had expected more. Hoped for more.
Rescuing them is more time sensitive than the Citadel evacuation. We need to act quickly.
For a moment I consider trying to dig Oliver out of the basement of Olympus. We could use his help. Like Oscar, Oliver could swim through the aquifer and the Citadel’s emergency water tube. He could double the rate at which we evacuate people from the Citadel—and those people could help us recover survivors here on the surface. But there are two problems with going after Oliver.
One: it would take time to reach him, even with the heavy equipment here in the bunker. I was hesitant to use the excavator at Olympus before because I hoped there were survivors in the rubble. The drone fly-over confirms that no one is alive in the debris. Still, digging with the excavator now could still inadvertently harm Oliver. We might rip him in half in the process of trying to find him.
The second issue is that I doubt Oliver survived the building’s collapse in working order. The basement under Olympus wasn’t built with the same rigor as CENTCOM, and twice as much building mass collapsed upon it. If Oliver were still operational, he would have responded to Oscar’s ping. Best case—he’s offline, either conserving power or damaged.
That leaves Grigory and me to go after the human survivors. I wish I knew how long they have to live. Days? Hours? Minutes?
In the middle of the floor, I leave a note for Oscar, Harry and Izumi telling them we’ve gone out to search for survivors.
“Whom do we go after first?” Grigory asks.
The answer comes to me immediately. It might not be the wisest move, but it’s the only one I can live with.
“The life signs with the lowest mass.”
“The children.”
“That’s right.”
Chapter 18
Emma
After Oscar leaves with Harry and Izumi, I set about doing something I probably should have done when we first arrived: inspecting our food supply.
We took a count of our supplies five days ago. But we didn’t physically open each box and look inside. As Min and I unseal the cartons of MREs and rations, I’m devastated by what we find: spoiled food. Several crates of MREs must have been damaged in transit to the Citadel. Their contents went bad months, maybe even years ago. With the lost supplies, we estimate that we have twelve days of food left—not sixteen as we previously believed.
James needs to know this.
All day, we keep watch, waiting for him, Grigory, or Oscar to emerge from the water treatment plant. But none of them return.
That night, I hold Allie close, hoping James will wake me in the night.
He doesn’t.
When I wake, he’s not in our bed. At this point, we haven’t heard from James or anyone on his team for nearly twenty-four hours. Someone should have been back by now—Oscar at the very least to retrieve others to help on the surface. My greatest fear is that James and his team are injured or dead.
If they’re still alive, trying to get us out of here, they believe we have about sixteen days of food left. We need to buy at least that much time for him.
I skipped dinner last night. Most of the adults did. Abby, Madison, and I shared an MRE for breakfast this morning, the sustenance barely beating back the hunger deep inside of me.
After breakfast, what’s left of the team meets in the kitchen, each of us sitting on a stool, eyes weary, all dreading what’s ahead.
“Okay,” Fowler says, “obviously we need to make our rations last longer. Let’s talk about our options.”
The expressions around the room—from Min, Charlotte, and Colonel Earls—tell me that none of us think there are any options. Or at least any good ones.
“The only option apparent to me,” Earls says, “is a reduction in population.”
Even as tired and hungry as we are, that draws reactions: a scowl from Charlotte, surprise from Min, and a curious look from Fowler. I’m horrified by the idea.
“What exactly are you proposing?” Fowler asks. “We don’t have a way to get more people out.” Clearly, he’s hoping Earls isn’t saying what we all think he is.
“No. The population would stay the same. I would request volunteers from my troops to stop taking rations.”
“That’s absurd,” Charlotte says.
“I don’t think we’re there yet,” Min says, face stoic.
“The sooner we make the call, the more time we buy ourselves,” Earls says. “I think we have to assume something has happened to James and his team on the surface. Best case, something has slowed them down. We can speculate on what that is—maybe the passage to the aquifer collapsed or the suits were damaged or the tube collapsed. Bottom line, if we do nothing, we’re giving them four days less than they think they have.” Earls pauses a moment. “Izumi said that those in the best health will endure the lower rations best. Especially those with excess fat and muscle. My people are fit. They don’t have a lot of fat on their bodies, but they do have a lot of muscle. And they’ve been trained for operating in challenging environments.”
Charlotte shakes her head. “For all we know, James could arrive in a week and those troops will have starved themselves for nothing.”
“Not for nothing, ma’am. We’re at war. In war, you fight the battle in front of you, and you don’t always know how that battle will affect the war’s outcome. Every one of the soldiers down here took an oath when they joined the Atlantic Union Army—an oath to protect its citizens and to give their life if necessary.”
“This isn’t a battle,” Charlotte insists.
“It is, ma’am. Starvation is the weapon our enemy is using on us. We need to fight it the only way we can, which is by reducing the number of mouths we have to feed.”
I shake my head. “Charlotte’s right. And plus, we need to think long term, about what happens when we get out of here. We may need those troops more then than we do now. We need them in good shape to help us. No. I’m against it.”
“What do you suggest?” Min asks me.
“Let’s consider the extreme rationing plan previously proposed. All the adults reduce their caloric intake. If we do, I bet we can buy another four days—the time James thinks we have down here.”