by Mike Kraus
A silence permeated the corner of the room as Rachel and Marcus listened to David as he gently interrogated the strange woman, trying to discover any memories she might still have. An uneasy question hung in the air between Marcus and Rachel for several moments before he voiced it.
“So what do we do with her?”
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
10:18 PM, April 12, 2038
Sleep did not come easy to Leonard despite his exhaustion, as his mind was too preoccupied with thoughts of Samuel. After half an hour of tossing and turning he eventually fell into a dreamless slumber for several hours as Nancy drove the armored vehicle, keeping them on a northerly path instead of going due west.
After examining the map, Leonard had decided that they should cut to the north and ride the border to the coast, picking up whatever supplies they could find along the way. Suggesting to Nancy that they make Bismarck their next major goal, he left out most of his fears about Samuel, not wanting to cause any more potential trauma by bringing up the situation.
With all of the major—and most of the minor—roads laid out in a grid pattern, it was easy to follow them north, even with a few major obstacles along the way. Halfway to Bismarck, during the evening hours, they passed through Aberdeen, one of the largest cities between Sioux Falls and Bismarck. Obviously considered large enough to qualify for a strike from a nuclear missile, the destruction in the city was nearly complete, unlike the patterned destruction in the larger cities like Sioux Falls.
Roadways through the city were impassable even to the APC, and Nancy gratefully gave up control of the vehicle to Leonard, who worked well into the night to maneuver them around through dirt roads and farmland to get them back on the highway north of the city. Any questions of obtaining supplies from the city were laid to rest by the totality of the smoldering ruins. Closer to them than Bismarck was another city of moderate size positioned on the eastern side of the Missouri river. Leonard and Nancy were tempted by both the closeness of the city and the opportunity to cross the major geographical obstacle, until they realized that the city—and the bridge over the river—could have easily suffered the same fate as Aberdeen. Falling in the valley between “too small” and “too large,” Leonard and Nancy decided to avoid any city of that size, choosing to assume that it was completely wiped out and, thus, useless to them.
Equipped with both air conditioning and a heater, the APC felt comfortable in the cold night wind outside, a fact that was appreciated by both Nancy and Leonard considering that they were still completely unprepared for cold weather. Sleeping soundly next to Leonard as he drove through the night, Nancy had no trouble resting, making Leonard doubly glad that he hadn’t shared all of his concerns about Samuel with her.
Switching the APC’s headlights to low and scanning the horizon ahead and behind them, Leonard nodded approvingly. At least, he thought, there’s nothing out here except us. About time.
The breaking of a new dawn brought with it a refreshingly clear sky with ominous hints of chaos on the horizon. Darkness stretched off to the west, signaling the imminent arrival of a new storm following close on the heels of the one that had swept through the village just days ago, bringing with it the vast army of mutated creatures. With the possibility of encountering another large group of creatures again, Leonard forced the APC to go faster, desperate to reach Bismarck before the storm hit so that he and Nancy could arm themselves.
“Why didn’t you want to talk to me about Samuel?”
Leonard jumped at hearing Nancy’s voice, swerving the car slightly. She reached out her hand to steady the wheel, not meaning to startle him. Having woken up several minutes ago, she had been quietly contemplating their previous conversation about Samuel as well as Leonard’s reluctance to discuss the issue.
“What do you—”
“Oh come on now, I’m not stupid. Just tell me.”
Leonard waited a few seconds before speaking as he tried to find the right way to answer Nancy without feeling like he might offend her.
“I’m sorry, Nancy. I wanted to talk to you, but after your experience with Samuel and Richard, I thought it would be better to just leave the topic alone.”
Nancy’s tone took on a sinister quality as she replied, reminding Leonard of how she had spoken when she killed Richard.
“Whatever those bastards did to me, it’s in the past now. James killed Joshua and I killed Richard. He’s lying dead in a pile of rubble right now, and if that pissed off his psycho father enough to come after us, I’ll welcome the opportunity to send him straight to the same place his sons are going.” Leonard glanced over at Nancy and caught her eye as she finished speaking.
“We’ve got him outnumbered, even if he’s not yet outgunned. And even if the scales weren’t tipped in our favor, you can sure as hell bet that I don’t just want you to talk to me. I need you to talk to me, Leonard, without me having to force you to.
“You and I are the only ones out here we can trust right now. Screw my emotions or whatever issues you might bring up. If you want to talk, then just do it. I’m a big girl, and right now we need to survive more than we need to be coddled, even if that means discussing Samuel and his demon offspring.”
Leonard couldn’t help but chuckle at Nancy’s choice of words. “You know, I bet he considers us the demons. He thinks we brought those creatures to them, to destroy his perfect little community.”
Nancy snorted and shook her head. “As if a few dozen people with some guns and a wooden wall could stop that many of those things. There had to have been hundreds or maybe thousands of them that didn’t even go into the village. If you want to talk about something that makes my skin crawl, that right there is it. I can’t imagine what those things are doing… or where they’re headed.”
“Cleansing the land, maybe? Maybe the AI decided that it’s time to wipe out the few survivors left?”
Nancy leaned forward to look at the clouds gathering off to their left, still far to the west but moving inexorably closer. “So do the nanobots make the storms? Or are they just using them for cover.”
Leonard swallowed hard and pressed down even harder on the accelerator. “Let’s try to get to Bismarck before we have to find out, shall we?”
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
10:33 PM, April 12, 2038
Bertha’s somewhat small size was deceptive in relation to its overall capabilities. Though it possessed dimensions roughly equivalent to a residential refrigerator tipped over on its side, its uneven weight distribution made it too awkward to carry. Although it tipped the scales at close to five hundred pounds, Marcus, Rachel and David were capable of moving it a few feet at a time. But most of Bertha’s weight was at one end, making it difficult for the three of them to get proper leverage to lift and move it.
After they had finished disconnecting the security devices from Bertha, David and Rachel worked with Marcus for a few more hours to successfully shift Bertha off of its pedestal and into the hall outside the room that still housed the mysterious woman. Since Rachel and David had ceased their questioning, she kept still on the floor, seemingly content to lie still on the floor, staring at the ceiling with her eyeless gaze.
Weary from their exertion, the trio had agreed that they each needed to get some sleep. With one person keeping watch, the other two slept for a few hours. Being underground for so long had disrupted their sleep cycle, but that fact paled in comparison to the exhaustion they all felt physically, mentally and emotionally.
In addition to keeping watch for any signs of nanobot swarms or creatures, the person on watch also tended to the strange woman, making sure that she was kept covered and comfortable. A few times each hour, Marcus, Rachel or David would offer food or water to her, only to be turned away by the same phrase she had used almost exclusively since Marcus found her. At one point, Rachel had tried to pour a bit of water into her mouth only to have the woman sit up, violently spit it out and then lie back down as though nothing had h
appened.
Despite the lack of food and water in the woman’s body, she was still functioning as she had when she was found, a fact that Rachel and David chalked up to the effects of the nanobots still inside her system. After Marcus’s revelation about how the nanobots on the woman’s arm had reacted negatively to his touch, Rachel took the risk of touching the woman’s arm as well, shocked to see the reaction firsthand. Though Marcus briefly took Rachel’s shocked reaction as one of negativity, he was quickly ushered away by David who explained that it was quite a good sign, but that they couldn’t risk saying anything about it while within earshot of the woman. If the nanobots inside her body were ever able to transmit data back to Mr. Doe, it would be a disaster if he learned that DNA whitelisting code was still contained within the nanobots’ operating system. Instead of operating through third-parties that he had infected, he might grow bolder and try to either kill them again or worse.
Though no more attacks from or sightings of the creatures had taken place—aside from the strange woman—there was still the problem of how to get Bertha from the heart of the laboratory complex up to street level, where it could be loaded into the back of the APC for transport. Rachel and Marcus had discussed this very fact with David on more than one occasion, but his response was the same each time.
“Get Bertha into the hall and the hard part will be over.”
With Bertha sitting in the hallway and a few hours of sleep under the trio’s belts, they stood around the device, holding a whispered conversation on how to get it out to the surface.
“Okay, David. It’s out here. Now how are we supposed to get it out of here? All the stairways up are blocked, and there’s no way we could carry it up a flight of stairs even if they were clear.”
David reached into his pocket and retrieved his handheld computer that he had saved from the EMP discharge. He powered on the screen and opened a blue and white building schematic that showed an overhead view of the laboratory facility. Zooming in on an edge of the complex, Rachel and Marcus could see a pair of parallel lines extending out from the facility and banking to the left, stopping at a road.
“See this? It’s an old service tunnel that starts on the next level down and runs to the street just outside.”
Taking the handheld from David, Rachel zoomed out and tapped on a small icon. “David, this tunnel was decommissioned years ago. It says so right here!”
David shook his head as he took back the computer, broadening the zoom level and navigating to the area in the building where they were standing. “I know it says that, but I have it on a good source that the tunnel’s not decommissioned. It was turned into some kind of evacuation route for a few of the top brass that like to come through here. If they were ever here and an attack occurred, it would be a fast way out.
“In fact, this tunnel was linked to a few others running under the city, so theoretically—if we had a way to get past the security—we could get out of here completely underground, assuming we had a need to. For now, though, we just need to get down one floor and then find the door to the tunnel and get it open so we can get out of here.”
Rachel took back the handheld, staring in silence at Bertha’s chamber that was centered on the screen. She was exhausted with being underground, and wanted nothing more than to make a run for the surface, but without a way to get Bertha through the collapsed areas, there was no point.
“How do you know the exit of this tunnel hasn’t collapsed too?” Marcus looked at the screen as he spoke, sensing this was Rachel’s next inevitable question.
David spoke patiently, explaining his reasoning with the attitude of someone who had spent a long time trying to devise the perfect method for getting out of the building even while he was still trapped in his office. “There’s no way to be sure, of course. There are no cameras in the tunnel and no official information on the type of reinforcement it had. However, if it was truly turned into an emergency escape route as I believe, I have to think that it would have been sufficiently reinforced to stand up to a localized bombardment.”
“There’s still one problem.” Rachel looked up from the screen, testing David’s plan with one final query. “How do you propose moving this thing down a flight of stairs and through an underground tunnel? We can’t exactly do it by hand.”
David grinned sheepishly and motioned for Rachel and Marcus to follow him. A short walk down the corridor led to a large set of double doors that David swung open, revealing a supply closet. Inside the closet sat a massive dolly, with large oversized rubber wheels and handles for both pushing and pulling whatever load was sitting on its large frame.
Rachel slapped David’s arm as she saw the contraption, grinning as she playfully tore into him for making them move Bertha out into the hall by hand. “You asshole! Why the hell didn’t you tell us about this earlier?”
David shrugged and pointed at the wheels. “No sense in risking Doe finding out we have a way to transport Bertha any sooner than necessary, especially since it wouldn’t have fit into the room anyway.”
Rachel clapped her arms around David in a hug, elated by his revelation. Marcus grinned along with them, feeling no small sense of relief about the fact that they were one step closer to getting Bertha out of the complex. A nagging feeling in the back of his head warned him to use caution, though, since the strange woman was still around. She didn’t seem to pose any threat to the group, but Marcus knew full well that situations in this new world were completely fluid, and anything that could happen likely would.
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
10:57 AM, April 13, 2038
Despite Leonard’s intense driving, he and Nancy were still several miles out from Bismarck when the storm clouds enveloped the sky above them, plunging the area into darkness. Switching the headlights on to illuminate their path, Leonard slowed the APC down, not wanting to collide with any of the cars that were growing more numerous as they got closer to the city. Being unable to see much of the city with the clouds overhead, Leonard and Nancy both decided that they needed to try for it anyway, hoping that there would be enough of it intact to salvage more supplies. Driving so slowly in the darkness, Leonard hoped that their pursuer had been thrown off their trail by the abrupt course correction, but only time would tell if this was true or not.
Driving past freeway off-ramps, Leonard nearly missed the office buildings to either side of the road, slamming on the brakes to bring the APC to a halt just before they flew past the last exit into the city. He maneuvered the APC in a slow circle on the road, using its bright lights to examine the surroundings in hopes of finding any intact structures. After two complete circles he stopped and pointed to the north.
“Looks like there’s some destruction up there, but back to our left it looks clear. I guess we should try for the south exit, eh?”
“I guess so… worse case, we’ll just drive around until we find some places that weren’t completely destroyed. I just hope there aren’t any swarms of muties that are coming along with the storm.”
Leonard looked up at the lightning flashing overhead and quickly put the APC into motion, driving up a slight hill bordering the southern end of the highway. Nancy’s reminder of the potential for there to be creatures moving under the cover of the storm spurred Leonard onward, and he soon had the APC moving down the tightly packed streets of the city.
Unlike the relatively open atmosphere of the small Iowan town, the city had been densely populated and the buildings were teetering on the brink of collapse. The streets of the southern area of the city had been torn apart in the same circular patterns that Leonard and Nancy had come to expect, though their main problem turned out to be the sheer number of overturned vehicles blocking their path.
Even with the APC’s powerful engine helping to push them through, Leonard soon found that they were getting bogged down, with the armored vehicle threatening to become inexorably lodged amongst the debris. Backing up a few blocks, he and Nancy sat still, listening to the storm o
utside while they tried to decide what to do.
“It looks like it clears up just ahead, and we’re getting into more commercial areas, so I’m sure we’ll at least find some clothing stores. Maybe I should take the rifle and try to scavenge what I can on foot while you wait at the APC.”
“Fat chance, Leonard. I’m not staying here unarmed, and you’re not going off in the storm on your own. We stick together; end of discussion.”
Leonard sighed and put his head back on the seat, closing his eyes. “Unless you have any better suggestions, I don’t think we have much of a choice at this point. Someone’s got to stay with the APC in case we need a quick getaway, and we don’t have enough guns or bullets for both of us to defend ourselves against any creatures lurking around.”
Nancy refused to budge against Leonard’s argument, and after a few minutes of back and forth, he relented.