by Mike Kraus
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
8:30 AM, April 21, 2038
Nancy glared at the guard who stood in front of the door to the room she was in. She had been forced into the room almost two hours prior, given a glass of water and plate of food, and then told in broken English to “be still and wait.” Going up against the beast of the man armed with an automatic weapon when she was defenseless wasn’t something she was afraid of, but she knew that doing so would help neither herself nor Leonard.
“You bastards had better be taking damned good care of him.” Nancy mumbled, loud enough for the guard to hear, but he didn’t even bother to glance in her direction. Standing up, she paced back and forth, watching as the guard flicked his eyes left and right to follow her movements. A knocking at the door made her pause and the guard reached around and slid the door open, then stepped to the side, all the while keeping Nancy directly in his gaze.
A young man, though older than the guard, stepped into the room, wearing a hat which he removed as soon as he ducked under the low doorway. He nodded to the guard who gave a quick salute before ducking out to stand in the hall. The man who came in slid the door shut and motioned to the couch where Nancy had been seated previously. She went back to her seat slowly, eyeing the man as she went, trying to size up who he was and what he wanted with her.
In addition to his fancy-looking hat, he wore a black jacket with a strange insignia on the side, along with the same slacks and shoes she had seen on the other crewmembers. His shirt was more upscale than she had seen, though, and the look in his eyes was one of leadership and command. As Nancy sat down the man did as well, in a chair opposite the couch. He smiled briefly at her before speaking, his accented voice slipping out through pearly white teeth.
“Madam, I apologize for keeping you here for so long. With the attack on the surface and the injury of your comrade, I had to ensure the safety of my vessel and my crew before I attended to you.”
Nancy opened her mouth to speak, but the man in front of her continued, gliding effortlessly over the words that started to come out of her mouth.
“Before you ask, your companion is still alive, if only barely. The doctor just delivered a report to me. His leg was severely damaged and had to be amputated, but the doctor was able to stabilize him for the moment. He lost a lot of blood, but the doctor thinks that he will pull through as long as infection doesn’t set in. Our doctor is new and inexperienced, but he assures me that he did the best he could under the circumstances. Your companion will need to rest for a time, but you’ll be able to visit him soon.
“Until then, we could certainly stand to learn a few things from each other, like our names, for a start. I am Commander Pavel Krylov, acting commander of the Typhoon-class submarine Arkhangelsk.”
Nancy stuttered, taken aback by the professionalism of Krylov’s voice and the confident way in which he spoke. When she had been dragged into the submarine, she had half expected to be tortured by a hardened military officer, not spoken to in English by someone with a fair sense of decorum.
“Uh… my name is Nancy. My friend’s name is Leonard.”
Commander Krylov nodded, jotting down notes in a small leather-bound pad. “It’s a pleasure to have you aboard, Nancy, though I do wish it was under frightfully different circumstances.”
Nancy leaned back slightly on the couch. She was still nervous thanks to being confined to a single room, but the commander of the submarine—What did he call it? The archangel?—seemed to be reasonable enough. Time was not on their side, though, and Nancy stared at the commander, considering her options for explaining why she and Leonard needed his help. With a deep breath, Nancy spoke, hoping that she would somehow be able to convince Krylov that the insanity she was about to tell him was actually the truth.
“Tell me, commander, what do you know about what happened on the surface?”
Anchorage, Alaska
Samuel longed for death. It was slow in coming, though. Slower than he had ever dreamed possible. The passing of the sun, the moon, the storm clouds and the snow all came and went more times than he could recall. Despite his pain and the deathly cold he was surrounded by, Samuel still felt himself clinging to life.
Barely able to move his arms and hands, Samuel determined that the bullet from the intruders must have severed his spinal cord. Each time a wave of pain washed over him, Samuel was hopeful that it meant he was about to pass into the next world, but he received no such grace. Inches of snow piled up around him, burying his body from the legs to the head, where he hoped for the release of death that would come from asphyxiation.
Again, death was cheated, and though Samuel’s lungs filled with water from the slowly melting snow, his body refused to die. Unable to move more than a few inches, Samuel’s body soon began to freeze. His muscles grew rigid and his skin frosted over, though he still retained his sensations of touch in his arms, upper chest and head.
Trapped between life and death, the last traces of sanity rapidly broke down in Samuel’s mind. He did not speak verbally, but in the fortress of his head, he rambled on for days without stopping, talking to everyone and no one at once. The few nanobots that infected his body were not enough to form a critical mass to transform him into one of the creatures, but they had been enough to slowly infest his body to the point where they could keep him alive.
They could not heal him, but their base level programming ensured that his body would continue functioning for the foreseeable future, denying him entry into the place he so craved to go. Fending off the worst of the cold and oxygenating his lungs, the devices had been deposited into his bloodstream when he was attacked by the small creatures. The secondary infection caused by the creature’s scratches had stimulated his immune system as it worked to fight off the invading bacteria. This immune system response had an additional effect of keeping the nanobots at bay.
Once he was critically injured, though, all bets were off, and his body began to shut down. No longer facing the same level of resistance as they had before, the nanobots quickly went to work clotting his wounds and keeping his body functioning at a basic level. Just a few moments had stood between life and death, and for Samuel, his perpetual existence on the wrong side of that line was to stretch out for a long time to come. Buried in the snowy darkness, he was trapped in limbo, a fate worse than he could have possibly imagined.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
9:07 AM, April 21, 2038
“What in the fuck?”
The words had barely escaped from Marcus’s mouth when he saw a flash of fire from the back left side of the helicopter. He instinctively dove to the ground, pulling David with him. They rolled under the train just as a small missile was launched from the helicopter, aimed directly for and impacting on the side of the APC. Though the armored vehicle was built to withstand powerful attacks, the explosives in the missile were designed specifically to defeat such armor. The APC exploded instantly, sending thick pieces of shrapnel flying in every direction. Several such pieces lodged themselves into the boxcar directly above Marcus and David, though the worst they suffered directly was exposure to intense heat and flames.
“Who the hell is that, David?” Marcus screamed over the sound of helicopter’s rotors. David shook his head, holding his ringing ears.
“I have no idea!”
Marcus began crawling forward under the train cars, heading for the front engine. “We have to get to Rachel!”
Another explosion rocked the remains of the APC, sending the last few intact pieces flying into the air. David cried out and Marcus looked back to see a credit-card sized piece of metal embedded into his arm. Marcus started to turn around to crawl back and help him but David shook his head and waved Marcus away.
“Just go take care of Rachel; I’ll be fine!
Marcus didn’t argue. He kept crawling forward, dragging himself across the gravel and splintered railroad ties. No more explosions came from behind them, but the sound of the hel
icopter’s rotors shifted as the craft began to move along the length of the train. Whoever he is, he’s got to be looking for us. With the APC and its contents obliterated, there was virtually no way to defend themselves against the helicopter and its occupant except for the rifle that Rachel had kept with her. As long as the pilot of the helicopter didn’t decide to start firing on the train itself, Marcus figured they would have the slimmest of chances of getting out of the mess alive.
By the time Marcus reached the lead locomotive, the helicopter was back at the front of the train, making slow circles a hundred feet above the ground. Marcus slid his body to the very edge of the tracks and leaned his head out, trying to stay hidden while he looked for the position of the craft. As Marcus watched, the helicopter swung around again, moving away from him in a slow clockwise circle. The craft was jet black in color, with no markings or insignia to identify what country or organization it belonged to. A pair of small wings extended from the sides of the craft, complementing the rotor overhead in an unusual manner. Marcus had never seen a helicopter like it before, nor had he any idea what its purpose was, other than to try to kill him and David.
Without warning, the helicopter turned sharply and began to move down the right side of the train, opposite to where Marcus was peeking out. Taking advantage of its movement, Marcus rolled out from underneath the train and ran to the front. He opened the door and hopped in, slamming it closed as he dove to the floor to stay out of sight. As he looked up, he saw a gun barrel in his face. Behind it was Rachel, her eyes wide and her whole body trembling. She held a finger to her lips before moving the gun out of the way and motioning Marcus to crawl over to her.
“Rachel! Are you all right?” Marcus whispered loudly, not sure how quiet he was supposed to be.
“Oh, as good as can be expected with that thing flying around. Where’s David? Was he in the APC when—”
“No, he’s still under the train. He took a bit of shrapnel in his arm but he said it wasn’t bad. We heard you yelling, but we had our hands full loading Bertha into the boxcar.”
Rachel’s whole body relaxed as she leaned back against a control station and closed her eyes. “Thank God. I thought Bertha was still on board when he destroyed the APC.”
“Rachel, who is that? Do you know?”
Rachel opened her eyes and stared at Marcus for a moment as they both listened to the helicopter circling back around to the front of the train.
“It’s Doe.”
Final Dawn
Will Return
Season 3 Coming Soon
While you’re waiting for the final chapter of Final Dawn, you may enjoy another book by Mike Kraus:
Prip’Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl
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