by Mike Kraus
After a burst of static and another squeal, a man’s deep voice could clearly be heard, though what he was saying was impossible to know. With a thick accent, the man spoke in a Slavic tongue, saying three different phrases before the transmission began to repeat. Leonard and Nancy sat still for several minutes as they listened to the transmission before looking at each other in sudden understanding.
“The Russians?” Nancy whispered, still listening to the man’s voice in a vain attempt to understand what he was saying.
“It’s got to be.”
Nancy pressed the microphone button and called out again. “This is Nancy and Leonard. We are Americans; please tell us who you are.” She repeated the message several times, but it did not change the message. Spoken in a simple monotone, whoever was on the other end was either not listening or didn’t have the capability of picking up the APC’s transmissions from such a long way out.
Leonard turned the engine back on and pushed forward, ignoring the repeating radio transmission even as Nancy continued to listen to it and tried to reply. Neither he nor Nancy understood Russian, but the fact that they were picking up a transmission meant that they were one step closer to locating the submarine.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
5:28 AM, April 21, 2038
The storm that had rolled in a few hours earlier and cut off the connection between the two APCs was fast-moving, and quickly vanished in the light of the coming dawn. Having taken turns driving all night, Rachel and David were both exhausted and had gotten virtually no sleep. Marcus, on the other hand, was well rested, and made that point abundantly clear while the APC was at a rest stop as they refueled from a collection of trucks.
“David, just listen to me!”
“Marcus, I’m not discussing this. I’m not going to let you get behind that wheel again and that’s final!”
“David, please!” Marcus threw his arms toward the sky in exasperation. “I swear to you, it won’t happen again!”
Turning away from the slowly filling water jug, David glowered at Marcus and jabbed his finger at the nearby armored vehicle. “The thing in the back of that APC is a thousand times more valuable than any of our lives. You risked it once because you just couldn’t handle waiting any more, or so you claim. I don’t really give a shit about that. What I do care about is that device and getting it to the coast intact!”
Marcus pushed his fingers through his hair, ignoring the grease and dirt buildup as he tried to find the words to convince David that what had happened wasn’t going to happen again. Turning to Rachel, he gave her a pleading look as she watched him argue with David. Shaking her head, she pushed herself up from a leaning position against the APC and walked toward David.
“David, you and I are thoroughly exhausted. We need to sleep, or else we’ll be useless.”
“So we sleep here for the next few hours! I couldn’t ride in the back of the APC, let alone sleep, with him driving!”
Marcus gritted his teeth and walked away from David. He wanted to lash out at the man, to berate him and call him a fool, but knew that doing so would only make David’s case stronger. As Rachel began to talk to David, Marcus continued walking away from the pair with Sam trailing behind him. The rest area they were at was dimly lit thanks to the rising sun, but it looked normal aside from a lack of streetlights and people attending to their cars and trucks. When he closed his eyes and listened, Marcus heard the sounds of the trees and insects around him, and he almost felt like he was back on his camping trip in West Virginia, before the bombs fell.
As Marcus wandered farther into the wooded area behind the rest area, another sound came into focus. Unlike Rachel and David’s heated argument, the wind brushing through the trees or the chirp of insects in the foliage, this sound was more artificial and high-pitched. Designed to travel for great distances, the faint sound of a train whistle continued to grow louder, coming from somewhere beyond a hill at the edge of the woods.
Upon identifying the sound, Marcus was frozen in place, not sure whether he should pursue the sound or run back to get Rachel and David. With Sam hot on his heels, Marcus made the decision to hurry back to his comrades, hoping that they would listen to him. Back at the APC, the pair was just finishing up the refueling process when Marcus ran up, panting and shouting.
“Hurry, get in! We need to move right now!”
David groaned and shook his head. “Not this shit again…”
“Get inside now David! I just heard a train over that hill!”
Rachel immediately jumped on what Marcus said while David looked between her and Marcus, trying to figure out if he should treat the situation seriously or not.
“You heard a train? Are you sure?”
“Yes, Rachel! If we don’t move now, though, we might lose it. It sounded like it was going at a nice clip.”
Rachel squared her jaw and nodded sharply. “Okay then, let’s go see what this train’s doing. David, get in the back.”
“What the hell? The back? Are you senile?”
Rachel’s eyes danced with a fire never before seen by Marcus or David. She grabbed David by the collar and pushed him up against the APC, growling in a low voice that sent a message clearer than the words she spoke. “Enough, David.” The two stood in silence for a few seconds before David looked away, slumping his shoulders forward in defeat. Rachel backed up a few inches from him, loosening her grip on his clothing.
“Bertha’s our main line of defense, so you and I need to be in the back while Marcus drives. I’m sure that won’t be an issue anymore, right?” Rachel looked to Marcus expectantly, waiting for a sign of confirmation from him. He nodded quickly and ran to the driver’s seat of the APC, not waiting for the rest of them to get in before he started strapping himself in.
Rachel hurried Sam into the passenger’s seat of the vehicle next to Marcus before she and David both climbed in the back and slammed the rear doors closed. With the engine going, Marcus pulled out of the rest area and began moving down the highway, searching for a clearing he could use to get over the long hill and to the train tracks he assumed were on the other side.
In the back, David pulled out his computer and turned it on, only to be met with a low battery warning. He gave it a puzzled look but plugged it into a port underneath the bench seat before trying to boot it again. Once the computer was on, he connected it to Bertha, taking full control of the device in case they had to use it. A series of automated checks performed by the computer software was part of the connection sequence, and each check showed that Bertha was fully operational and ready to fire.
“Hold on!” Marcus shouted from the front seat barely a half second before he swung the APC to the right, cutting straight through a guardrail. A small ditch was just beyond the rail, and beyond that a wide field that ended at the base of the hill that he was determined to cross. As they drew closer to the hill, the sound of the train whistle grew louder and the trio steeled themselves for whatever was coming next.
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
5:40 AM, April 21, 2038
The sight of the midnight aurora borealis had been breathtaking, but true beauty came to Leonard and Nancy in the form of the morning light. It reflected off of the snow, casting blinding shimmers into the cabin of the APC and making sharp shadows at the bases of the trees and mountains on both sides of the highway. The truly stunning sight, though, was the ocean. In the distance, the blue waters glimmered beyond the horizon, and just before them was the familiar sight of a half-destroyed city.
“There’s Anchorage!”
For a city in Alaska, Anchorage was larger than Leonard had expected. It was the largest city in the state, nearly ten times larger than Fairbanks, which came in at number two on the population scale. Driving through the modern city, Leonard found it very difficult to tell that they were in such a remote area of the planet. While most of the major buildings had been destroyed or damaged, the main highway leading down to the docks was passable.
The closer they got to the ocean, the more buildings they found intact, giving hope to the possibility that they would be able to find a boat to carry them up the coast.
As Leonard pulled onto a narrow road that wound along the edge of the water, Nancy kept looking at the ocean, idly wondering how far away the Russian submarine had been when it was transmitting. The waves of blue water were hypnotic, and Nancy found herself lost in them, watching as they crashed against the rocks and sand on the shore. As her gaze followed the water up into the bay, Nancy noticed a black shape beneath the water.
“Hey, stop for a second. I think I see a whale out there!”
Leonard eased the APC to a stop and climbed out, taking a pair of binoculars from the back that they had retrieved from a sporting goods store in Whitehorse. He focused in on the black shape, watching as it slid steadily through the water, making no deviations to the left or the right. Submerged just below the surface, it was longer than any whale Leonard had ever seen, though the water made it difficult to decide what it was. After a few moments of watching it cruise along the coast, winding its way around the end of the bay, Leonard finally realized that it wasn’t a whale.
“Nancy…” Leonard’s voice was brimming with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
“What? Are there more of them out there?”
“That’s not a whale, Nancy. You just found our Russian sub.”
Nancy grabbed the binoculars from Leonard and looked at the object herself. Her mouth dropped open in shock and she quickly handed the binoculars back before grabbing Leonard’s shoulders in glee. The pair jumped up and down with excitement for a moment before calming down and coming to their senses.
“We’ve got to get their attention somehow!” Leonard began digging through the back of the APC, looking for some sort of signaling device they could use to attract the attention of the submarine. Nancy ran around to the back compartment and spoke quickly, already feeling nervous by the proximity of the sub.
“Are you sure about that?”
“What do you mean? We need to get on board, right?”
“Well yes, but didn’t we expect it to be empty and abandoned?”
Leonard stopped rummaging through the back of the vehicle and sat on the bumper, considering what Nancy had said. Though they had originally assumed the submarine to be abandoned, the fact that it wasn’t couldn’t be changed. “Does it really matter at this point? It’s not like we can take on a submarine in armed combat. If we’re going to try to destroy that nexus, we need their help, and getting them to talk to us is going to be our only shot.”
Nancy sighed and nodded. “We’ve come this far. I guess it’s our only shot.”
Leonard patted Nancy’s shoulder and smiled, trying to encourage her. “We’ll be fine; don’t worry about it. Why don’t you get on the radio and see if you can figure out what channel they’re using? I’ll keep looking for something back here to get their attention.”
Leonard continued looking through the back of the APC, setting aside guns and survival supplies in a desperate attempt to find a device to draw the attention of whoever was piloting the submarine. In the front, Nancy began to send out messages on various frequencies, starting with the one that they had previously received the submarine’s message on.
“This message is directed to the submarine; we are located near the docks at your location. We need your help. Please respond.” Nancy’s message was simple and without flair, but it soon got her more response than she had anticipated. As she was flipping back down through the radio frequencies, she came across a Russian voice speaking loudly. She held down the microphone button and responded quickly, drawing the attention of Leonard who hopped into the driver’s seat next to her.
“Hello? I don’t speak Russian. I’m an American; please help us!”
Nancy started to repeat herself when Leonard pointed out the window at the black shape out in the bay. “Look!” The submarine had changed course and was moving faster now, heading directly for the longest dock just a mile down the road. Leonard jammed on the gas, sending the APC flying down the road toward the docks. Nancy grinned madly with excitement as she watched the submarine move along parallel to their path.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
5:43 AM, April 21, 2038
Not sure what to expect as they crested the hill, Marcus slowed the APC to a crawl. At the base of the hill, nestled between two rows of trees, a train track was visible, though there was no train yet in sight. Marcus shut the vehicle’s engine off and cracked his door open, holding his breath as he listened for the whistle. It had been loud enough for them to hear clearly before they crossed over the hill, though they now heard nothing but the wind.
After a moment of waiting, the whistle came again, this time far from the left, down the tracks to the south. Marcus pulled his door shut, started the APC up again, and began tearing down the side of the hill toward the track.
“That thing must be going at an insane speed to be that far away already!” Rachel shouted over the sound of the APC bumping and sliding down the slope of the hill. “Just get us next to the tracks and floor it!”
Marcus didn’t answer, being too busy concentrating on not running directly into any trees larger than a sapling as they entered the rows of trees at the base of the hill. A sickening snap came from the right side as Marcus slid the APC into the small open strip next to the railroad track. The entire vehicle shuddered violently but did not slow down as the rear end slammed into a large oak tree, sending chunks of bark and branches flying in every direction.
“So what’s the plan once we catch this thing?” David looked up at his computer, directing his question at Rachel. The steady driving by Marcus seemed to help calm David down, though he still occasionally glanced at the front seat with a worried expression. Leaning forward to look out the windshield at the tracks ahead, Rachel shrugged.
“I’m not sure yet. We’ll need to catch this thing first before we can do anything to try to stop it.”
“Uh, wait, we’re going to stop the train?” Marcus chimed in with a disbelieving voice. “Any particular reason why?”
“The train I encountered on the way to Washington was loaded with supplies and it was headed south. The same was true of the one that Leonard and Nancy saw. If the AI is using the building materials from these trains on that fancy new structure that it’s putting up, then maybe stopping the delivery of a train will screw with its schedule.”
“Do you think one trainload of supplies is going to mess with them that much?” David asked.
Rachel shrugged again, then sat back in her seat. “We’ll find out, I guess.”
“Sooner than you’d like, in fact.” Marcus’s near-silent whisper caught the attention of Rachel and David more than a shout would have. They both moved as far forward as possible and peeked through to the front, looking out the windshield. Up ahead, just coming into view, was the distant form of the back of the train that Marcus had first heard approaching the area near the rest stop. The train was vibrating heavily as it traveled, giving evidence of just how fast it was going.
“Okay, there’s the train. What now?” Marcus shifted his gaze back to Rachel and David who were both staying quiet. “Anybody?”
Rachel bit her lip in concentration and nodded to herself a few times, mumbling under her breath. Finally she slid back down the row of bench seats and grabbed her rifle, ensuring it was loaded and ready to go. “Get us up next to the train, on the right side. I want to see what we’re dealing with first. David, get Bertha ready to fire, but only on a quarter power so we don’t have to wait so long to get it to charge back up. Make sure it’s directed out the back so we don’t fry the car, okay?”
The momentary silence in the APC was replaced with a flurry of activity. David opened his computer and began making more adjustments to Bertha, preparing the device to deliver an electromagnetic pulse. Marcus increased their speed, sinking lower into his seat as the APC began to bounce m
ore violently over the terrain. The ground next to the railroad track was smooth, but they were doing well over ninety miles an hour and barely catching up to the train. The high speed magnified every bump on the ground and made Marcus hope that his dental fillings wouldn’t make an untimely exit.
From the rear, the train looked like any other freight train with dozens of boxcars all lined up and connected together. There were no signs of any creatures on the train, nor were there any signs of the nanobot swarms that had accompanied the train that Rachel had encountered as well as the one that Leonard and Nancy had seen. In fact, the only thing odd about the train was the difference in rust and wear between the main train car bodies and their wheels. Stripped of any sign of rust, the wheels shimmered in the sun, having been recently cleaned and polished to a point where they would offer virtually no friction. The boxcar bodies, on the other hand, were still rusted and worn, aside from a few patches of new wood and metal that had been attached without the benefit of being repainted.