Final Dawn: Season 3 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series)

by Mike Kraus

  Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims

  11:48 AM, April 21, 2038

  The energy on the command deck of the Arkhangelsk was electrifying. A hum was in the air, carried on the backs of the crew members who hurried back and forth as they prepared the ship for its most dangerous mission yet. Although the ship had an official top speed of forty knots, Commander Krylov had ordered them to increase it by a minimum of fifty percent in an effort to get to the gulf as quickly as possible. They could launch the missiles before reaching the gulf if they had to, but they would not be in radio range of the area for a few more days. Without radio contact with Rachel, Marcus and David, they would have no way of knowing precisely where to target the missiles, assuming they would have to use them at all.

  “How can you be certain that your companions are still alive?”

  Commander Krylov and Nancy were standing around a chart table in a corner of the command deck, poring over a map laid out in front of them. Seated next to them with a pair of crutches leaning up against the wall, Leonard raised himself up as much as he could in his chair to get a view of the map as he responded to Krylov’s question.

  “The last radio contact we had with them was before we hit Anchorage, but we got cut off, presumably because of the storms.”

  “Storms?” Krylov looked puzzled.

  “Oh yes,” Nancy answered, “these massive super storms. Haven’t you seen them?”

  Krylov shook his head slowly. “No, we haven’t seen anything of the kind. But we haven’t been on the surface much as of late. Once we detected those nano-robots on our scanners, I decided it would be wiser to stay submerged.”

  “Well, whatever they are, they’re huge. They take days to pass by, and they’re covering huge spans of surface area, with fairly short breaks in between them.”

  Krylov sighed and looked back at the map, running his index finger along a path that had been drawn and redrawn several times already. “Then we’ll just have to make our move and hope that we can reach them once we get closer to the coast.”

  A shudder came from somewhere deep in the bowels of the submarine and Krylov stood straight, looking across the command deck at the face of a nervous crewman. He shouted at the crewman in Russian and a quick response came in turn. It had pleased Krylov, apparently, because his demeanor relaxed and he leaned forward on the table once again.

  “The engines are now running at one hundred and fifteen percent. We’ll be at one-twenty-five within the hour.”

  “Can this old thing handle that?” Leonard looked mildly concerned as he asked the question due in no small part to the ominous low frequency vibrations that were coursing through the vessel.

  “The Arkhangelsk may be old,” Krylov said, with a slight note of warning in his voice, “but she’ll get us there. Right now we need to focus on what’s going to happen once we breach the canal and reach the gulf.”

  Redesigned six years earlier, the Panama Canal had received a complete upgrade for the modern age. Twice as wide as it had previously been, the canal was nearly completely automated and its pumps operated off of a combination of geothermal and solar energy. The only human input required to pass through was to activate a control station, though the task was trivial compared to the larger goal. Once through the canal, the Arkhangelsk would have to travel as fast as her crew could push her to reach radio range with the area that Leonard and Nancy presumed Rachel, Marcus and David would be. Without direct communications with them, the crew on the sub would have no way of knowing if—much less where—they should be firing their missiles.

  Leonard sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “Just get us in radio range of Marcus and Rachel, Commander, and we’ll be able to tell you exactly where to put the missile.”

  One of the command crew rushed to Krylov, a computer in hand, and placed it on the table. “Sir,” he spoke, in English no less, “we were able to reach the satellite. We’re getting live imagery now.” Krylov tilted the screen of the laptop so that Nancy and Leonard could see. Images scrolled slowly through the screen, showing roiling storms over the western section of the USA.

  “Wait a second, that’s the satellite that Rachel and David were accessing.” Nancy couldn’t help letting the slightest bit of an accusatory tone slip. “How did you get this?”

  Krylov held up the data stick they had taken from Leonard and placed it on the table next to the laptop. “Whoever put this together included access instructions for the satellite; it was designed that way, Ms. Sims. The person who made this wanted whoever found it to have full access to every resource left.” Krylov pressed a button on the laptop and an image on the screen froze. “And it’s a good thing, too.”

  A massive storm was sweeping in toward the coast, directly toward the Arkhangelsk’s position. Looking across the bridge, Krylov shouted at the crewmen, raising his voice above the groans of the ship. “It’s time to submerge, gentlemen. Take us to five hundred!”

  Shouts of affirmation came back and the submarine began to tilt forward, racing downward at a steep enough angle that Nancy and Leonard both clung to the table with white knuckles. Krylov smiled at them, remembering what his first voyage on a sub had been like, and wondering what was going through the heads of the two American civilians who had found their way onto his vessel.

  Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry

  5:58 PM, April 21, 2038

  After talking for a few minutes about what they were going to do next, Rachel, Marcus and David all fell asleep on the floor of the locomotive, their bodies succumbing to the effects of both their wounds and exhaustion. With the train tracks both ahead and behind the train destroyed, they had to quickly face up to the fact that they weren’t going to be going anywhere. The destruction of the APC eliminated any hope of continuing on with it, as well, and the likelihood of finding any other vehicles nearby that would be in working condition was slim at best.

  The first to wake up, Marcus quietly exited the train with Sam, walking slowly down the length of the train in the last few minutes of light they had. Night was nearly upon them, along with the edge of another set of storm clouds, and Marcus wanted to be certain that they hadn’t missed anything. Flashlight in hand, he scanned the interior of the train cars, the doors of which were still rolled open from when the creatures inside had been trying to attack them.

  Most of the contents of the boxcars were unrecognizable to Marcus, except for the few cars directly behind the locomotives. In addition to holding Bertha, the front few boxcars also held a variety of workman’s tools, thick metal rails, wooden ties, spikes and—in the fourth car—a large amount of gravel for smoothing out uneven surfaces. While Marcus had seen the contents of a few of the boxcars previously, he had been under enormous stress while doing so, and this was his first chance to check them out in a relatively calm environment. Clenching his teeth, he pulled himself into the second boxcar, trying to keep his shoulder as still as possible.

  Marcus played the flashlight over the interior of the darkened boxcar as Sam sniffed around his feet, growling at two dead creatures that were hanging out of the open door on the opposite side. Thunder rumbled in the distance, causing a shiver to run down Marcus’s spine as the eerie atmosphere of the train began to affect him. Shaking the feeling off, he continued looking through the supplies, nurturing the seed of a plan that he had been forming since shortly after he had shot Mr. Doe in the back. Moving on to the next train car, he found that it was filled with more rails and ties, and between all of the supplies he had seen, there looked to be enough to lay down a half mile or more of track with little or no difficulty. From Marcus’s estimation, the amount of track that had been destroyed in front of them by the missile was no more than thirty feet in length.

  It’ll never work, he thought, but stranger things than this have succeeded so far.

  Walking back to the locomotive with Sam behind him, Marcus heard Rachel and David’s voice before he saw them. As he rounded the corner to the front of the train, he sa
w the two of them standing near the destroyed section of rail, gesturing between it and the train behind them.

  “Oh come on, David. It can’t be that hard.”

  “Are you serious? One of those ties is several hundred pounds on its own. And none of us are in the best of shape, either.”

  The pair turned and looked at Marcus upon hearing the sound of gravel crunching underfoot. Smiling, he nodded toward the damaged track and spoke to Rachel. “So you had the same idea, eh?”

  David threw his hands into the air and walked back toward the train in frustration. “You’re both insane!”

  Marcus watched David walk back to the locomotive and climb back inside before turning back to Rachel. “What do you figure our chances here are?”

  “Based on our track record, I’d say we’ve got a pretty good shot. It’s not like we have any other choice, though. Going on foot is a no-go, and finding a vehicle that’s still operational that could hold Bertha is a fool’s errand.”

  “So is trying to lay down thirty feet of railroad track when none of us have any idea how to do it.”

  Rachel gave Marcus a half-smile and walked a few feet forward, to the edge of where the track had been damaged. She wobbled slightly as she walked, and Marcus could see that she was still fighting through a large amount of pain. The shallow crater in front of her was several inches deep, down to the bottom layer of gravel that the railroad ties rested in. The major damage hadn’t been to the ground, though, but to the ties and rails themselves. Pieces of the wooden ties were scattered around and in the crater, and several short sections of rail were missing as well. At both ends of the crater, where the rails were intact, there were a few feet of mangled, twisted steel loosely joined to the intact sections of rail by screw spikes.

  “Come on now, it won’t be that bad.” Rachel patted Marcus’s shoulder as she circled around him, walking the perimeter of the crater. “It’s not like we have to make it perfect. If we can fill this hole in, get a couple of ties to put down in the middle and nail down a few lengths of rail on each side, we should be okay.”

  Marcus gestured to the long trail of train cars behind him. “Somehow I doubt that half-assing a railroad track is going to get that thing across.”

  “Well,” Rachel mused, “what if we disconnected everything but the locomotives and the boxcar holding Bertha?”

  Marcus kicked a large piece of gravel into the shallow crater, nodding as he considered Rachel’s suggestion. “I guess that would be easier, but won’t the AI be expecting a full train to arrive?”

  “We’ll burn that bridge once we come to it. For now, let’s just see if we can do the impossible. Again.”

  Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims

  4:18 PM, April 21, 2038

  For what felt like the hundredth time in a day, Nancy was once again overwhelmed by the magnitude of the vessel she was on. Having been given nearly free reign to go wherever she wanted on the sub, she had taken to wandering the corridors while Leonard rested. Exploring the vast interior of the submarine was a strange experience for Nancy, who had never dreamed that a craft as large as the Arkhangelsk could have existed, let alone be capable of traveling at such incredible speeds underwater. After exploring the ship for a few hours, Nancy finally found her way back to the dining room, where half of the small crew—including Commander Krylov—were gathered for a meal.

  Nancy walked slowly through the dining room until she caught Krylov’s eye. He quickly waved her over and she sat down next to him. A moment later a plate of steaming food was deposited in front of her along with a drink, napkin and utensils. While the food was less than appetizing, she dug into it with gusto, having only had a few sips of water and military rations since arriving on the sub.

  “How is Mr. McComb doing, Ms. Sims?”

  Nancy wiped some crumbs from the corner of her mouth and cleared her throat. “He was sleeping when I checked in on him last. I was going to go bring him some food. I don’t think he’s had much at all to eat.”

  Krylov waved his hand dismissingly at her. “No, no, he’s being well looked after. The doctor is ensuring he’s getting everything he needs. What about yourself? Was your exploration of the Arkhangelsk illuminating?”

  Nancy nodded and laughed lightly. “It was nothing short of astonishing, Commander. It’s like a city under the water. There aren’t that many people, though. It looks like hundreds could fit in here.”

  “One hundred and sixty is the recommended complement, but she can hold far more, it’s true.” Krylov said. Nancy had finished eating and Krylov stood up, motioning for Nancy to follow him. They walked together out of the dining room down the hallway as Krylov continued to talk. “Of course, when we left port, we already had a small crew, but losing two landing parties to those things up there cut us down to what you see now.”

  Krylov’s heavy sigh weighed on Nancy and she looked at him closely, noticing the dark circles under his eyes and worry lines etched into his forehead. “Have you ever taken command of a submarine before?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Krylov snorted. “I wasn’t going to be up for a promotion for quite a long time. Losing Commander Alexeyev has been… difficult. On all of us. This nano-robot business, though, and the whole end of the world situation, that’s going to be even harder to break to the crew.”

  “You mean they don’t know about it?”

  “Not all of them, no. A select few who I trust to be discrete have been informed. They’re the ones who worked on decrypting the data stick and who accessed the satellite, among other things. The rest of the men don’t need to know yet. Knowing that their country has been obliterated would do little to invigorate then for the journey ahead, and we’ll need every man’s full attention to see this through to the end successfully.”

  Nancy was quiet for a moment as she digested what Krylov had told her. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “You said the country’s been obliterated. Is that because…”

  “Yes. As the satellite was passing over, I examined the imagery quite closely. We wouldn’t be en route to your country if mine wasn’t all but wiped off the face of the earth.” Krylov’s tone had a sting near the end, putting Nancy on the defensive.

  “Commander, you realize that we were hurt just as much as you, right? I’ve seen more death and destruction than I could have ever imagined just in the few places we’ve been. You’re not the only one who’s suffered losses.”

  “No, Ms. Sims, we aren’t. But we also aren’t the ones who started this disaster.” Krylov’s eyes and voice started to fill with anger, though as he looked at Nancy it quickly died out. He sighed again and stopped, leaning against the wall in the empty corridor. “You have my apologies. You are no more responsible for this than I am.”

  Nancy placed her hand on Krylov’s shoulder, smiling grimly at him. “There’s no need for apologies, Commander. None of us expected to be in this situation. I, for one, am glad that we found you, and I know Leonard is as well. If Marcus and Rachel fail, then you and your crew are the last hope for all of us.”

  Krylov closed his eyes momentarily and nodded solemnly before pushing off the wall and continuing his walk. Nancy stayed next to him as they wound their way to the medical ward where Leonard was sleeping.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Ms. Sims, I need to tend to my duties. Please don’t hesitate to call for someone if you or Mr. McComb need anything.”

  Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry

  2:18 PM, April 23, 2038

  Three strong individuals with experience, determination and a healthy dose of gumption could easily have replaced thirty feet of railroad track in far less than a day. Three inexperienced, injured and exhausted individuals struggling against all odds, though, took quite a lot longer. After consuming a healthy dose of painkillers that did little to diminish their discomfort, Marcus, Rachel and David set to work, committing to the only course of action open to them. The first few hours of the repair started with an argument between Rachel and Da
vid that lasted well into the afternoon. As Marcus slowly pushed load after load of gravel from the boxcars to the crater in a wheelbarrow he had found in a pile of other tools, he listened to Rachel trying to convince David that repairing the track was their only shot at getting out of their current predicament. David argued ferociously, citing their injuries, their lack of knowledge on the subject and listing off as many different reasons why it wouldn’t work as he could think of.

  Each argument was shot down by Rachel until, finally, Marcus ended the whole conversation by sticking his head in the doorway of the locomotive and whistling loudly.

  “Hey, assholes. I got the hole filled in. Do you two want to come help, or would you rather dick around some more while I finish it all up myself?”

  Initially, David wore an angered expression, at least until he glanced past Marcus to see a pile of gravel filling the shallow crater where Mr. Doe had destroyed the track. This combined with the fact that Marcus’s arm was still in a sling broke David’s resistance and his anger fell, replaced with equal parts shame and acceptance. For her part, Rachel was apologetic, having completely lost track of time as she had argued nonstop with David. Marcus waved them away, rolling his eyes as he slowly pushed a final load of gravel to its destination. Rachel and David joined him and, together, the three evaluated Marcus’s work in the light of the electrical storm overhead. Over the course of the next day and a half, Rachel and David threw their backs into the work alongside Marcus. Remaining uncharacteristically quiet, David said nothing negative about Marcus the entire time, having gained a healthy dose of respect for the man that he had shown incredible disdain towards just a few days prior.