Day by Day Armageddon: Shattered Hourglass

by J. L. Bourne

  They went to work quickly, choosing a spot out of the way so the gear would not be accidentally rendered inoperable by the undead. Using some debris, they constructed a makeshift enclosure out of a section of damaged fencing. Disco worked inside the small confines. He opened the comm box and arranged the power panels so that they would have maximum southern exposure. Booting up the system on battery power, he connected to the ruggedized laptop within seconds.

  He then sent out a burst message to the USS George Washington: “GW DE TFP, INT ZBZ . . . k/disco.”

  Again he sent: “GW DE TFP, INT ZBZ . . . k/disco.”

  After a few minutes the laptop beeped loudly, indicating a new burst transmission had been received from the ship: “TFP DE GW, you are spittin’ nickels . . . Admiral wants your status . . . k/IT2.”

  Disco responded, “DE TFP, Hotel 23 up and online, systems green, confirmed zero one (01) bolt in the quiver . . . k/Disco.”

  “DE GW, be advised sun up in 58 mikes . . . this station req you check back in 24 hrs . . . AR/IT2.”

  Disco shut the clamshell on the computer and slid it into his pack. “Comms are full up, Doc.”

  “Good to know. Let’s get below before sunup and lock the place down. No one goes out during the day. Those things plus the other event that happened here make it too dangerous. No RF transmissions unless it’s burst. I doubt we were lucky enough to go undetected but we’ll keep trying to stay out of sight and mind, if able.”

  “Good fucking plan. Don’t want one of those huge lawn darts dropping on us,” Hawse said half-jokingly.

  No one gave an approving laugh. They all wanted to deny the possible deployment of what the intelligence briefers referred to as Project Hurricane, as there would be no convoy or helicopter evac for these men. The carrier was still far to the south, near Panamanian waters.

  Billy was again last man as he spun the wheel securing the door to the world outside. They would all now live as vampires.

  10

  Doc lay in his rack, drifting somewhere in a world just before sleep. Since the fall, most of his dreams had involved the undead. His special-ops team had been haphazardly thrown together by national command authority after he and Billy escaped Afghanistan. When their ship finally arrived in U.S. territorial waters, a giant swarm of undead stood fast on the eastern shore to greet them.

  Before it got this bad, Doc heard stories of people burning money to stay warm, and using two-hundred-thousand-dollar sports cars as road barricades. Hawse told a tale of a Washington, D.C., street vendor trading candles and antibiotics from an armored car in exchange for ammunition and bottled water. That was before the undead population exploded to the point that it wasn’t even safe to look out of your boarded-up windows.

  Hawse joined them sometime after he fled Washington, D.C. Disco showed up after they lost Hammer. Doc moved slowly toward sleep as he recalled Hammer’s last mission.

  A helicopter screamed up the Louisiana coastline, well inside the New Orleans hot zone. Doc knew Sam, his pilot, as this was not their first ride together.

  “I want to make this quick, Doc,” Sam said into his headset.

  “Me, too, I don’t like going overland these days anymore than you do.”

  “We lost another bird last week. A friend of mine, Baham, was the pilot. Hope he’s okay.”

  Knowing that he was very likely not okay, Doc said comfortingly, “He’s probably trying to get back home on foot.”

  “Yeah, if you say so.” Sam wasn’t buying it. “I see those steel cages back there and I know what we’re after but I gotta tell you right now, Doc, I don’t like this shit. The first sign of trouble, you toss those cages out the door, and we are gone, got me?”

  “Yeah, you won’t have to tell us. Hawse said the same thing. He doesn’t want any part of it either,” Doc said. “Besides, our job is to grab ’em and secure ’em. We don’t know where you’re taking them. Want to tell me?”

  Sam looked over with a conspiratorial grin and said, “You’re gonna find out anyway when we get there. As a reward for delivering those radioactive pus sacks, I’ve secured you boys one night living in the lap of luxury. After we pick ’em up, we’re takin’ ’em to the carrier. The researchers want to poke and prod ’em. See what’s makin’ ’em run.”

  Doc sat up in his seat. They could see the outline of Lake Pontchartrain now.

  “Sam, I don’t think me or the boys will want to stay on that carrier with those things onboard. I don’t care how soft the beds are or how nice the air-conditioning is or how hot the showers might be.”

  “No choice. We gotta stay and get fuel and maintenance on this bird so I don’t end up like Baham down there somewhere . . . okay, we’re getting close. You guys check your HAZMAT suits and put those hoods on, for fuck’s sake. Intel says it’s hot enough to melt your face off down there. Don’t get too close to the cars and trucks or anything metal. They’ll be throwin’ out the radiation. Who’s staying up here to work the winch and tend the cage?”

  “Hammer volunteered.” Doc looked back at Hammer just in time to see him give a thumbs-up.

  “Roger that. I’ll keep you steady when Hammer drops the hook. Our recon photos show a small group of them trapped on the causeway. We’ll be cruising over in a minute or two. Get ready.”

  “Roger.” Doc began to unstrap and head back. Sam stopped him, grabbing his arm.

  “Be safe and have a good ’un.”

  “Have a good ’un,” Doc replied.

  Doc scanned the team, checking all harnesses. “Billy, good to go. Hawse, tighten your shit.”

  Hawse reached down and yanked his harness tight. Doc looked over to Hammer, no harness. He wasn’t going to the ground today.

  “Hoods on!” Doc yelled. “Sam is taking us low. The dust won’t be breathable. You’ll end up one of those vets with cancer lawsuit commercials in thirty years when things get back to normal.”

  “Ha ha fucking ha,” Hawse said as he slid his mask on.

  Billy and Hammer followed suit.

  “Radio check,” Doc ordered.

  Everyone came back with a good check, their voices muffled by the HAZMAT hoods. The chopper was hovering high over Lake Ponchartrain and the causeway bridge that spanned the large Louisiana estuary. The helicopter jerked a little. Sam flew the aircraft with his knees while he put on his hood. The helicopter began its descent. The causeway grew larger below them as Sam carefully adjusted altitude, starting his hover. Looking out the door below, Doc could see that Sam had picked a good spot. There were three creatures on a hundred-meter section of the causeway, plugged on both sides by multi-car pileups. The helicopter hovered between the roadblocks. On either side of the wrecked cars were hundreds of excited creatures looking up at the hovering helicopter, attracted by the noise, hands reaching for the sky.

  The creatures began to crawl over the cars to get to the section of causeway directly below the chopper. Streams of undead converged from both directions. The corpses moved swiftly.

  The team wouldn’t have much time.

  The three men hooked up to the helicopter deck and began to descend with their gear. Even as they lowered themselves down, the three creatures contained between the wreckage began to trot over to their landing area. The rotor blast threw radioactive dust particles in all directions. Without the suits, the operators would no doubt be dead from exposure in hours, and reanimated shortly after. Their orders were surprisingly simple. Extract two undead specimens from two different radiated zones: one exposed to medium-level radiation and another exposed to ground-zero radiation.

  The second their boots hit the ground, they unhooked their lines. Hammer was fifty feet above, working the controls on the winch line; it slowly descended, bringing the hook down to ground level.

  The three creatures moved closer.

  Hawse shot the runt of the litter and Billy shot another. They wanted the best specimen—they didn’t wish to risk a mission repeat if the specimens were found wanting.

&n
bsp; The remaining alpha didn’t seem to notice that the other two were no longer part of its pack. The three had likely been trapped on this same section of crumbling causeway since the nuke destroyed New Orleans almost a year ago. Doc aimed his gun at the last creature and pulled the trigger.

  The Kevlar net blasted forward from the high-pressure pneumatic gun at over a hundred feet per second. It hit the creature, violently knocking it to the concrete. The creature squirmed about, angrily tearing at the Kevlar netting. Hawse ran over to the net searching for a spot free from the creature’s teeth and hands. He found one and quickly dragged the thing over to the winch line and hook. The rotor wind continued to whip them about. Sounds of radioactive sand and dust particles ticking at their hood visors were audible, even over the helicopter wash. Making sure the hook was grounded, Doc attached the winch line to the Kevlar netting and backed away, raising his thumb to Hammer high above. Hammer returned a thumb and the winch line began to raise the netted and furious creature up to the bird.

  Hammer soon radioed down to Doc. “It’s secure.”

  “Roger, lower the winch. Do not descend. You’ll just get more dust in the chopper.”

  Hammer lowered the winch and pulled the three operators back up into the aircraft. Inside the bird, the caged monster jerked about, gnashing its teeth on the metal. Its white, hollow eyes followed the men while they prepared for the next specimen extraction.

  The helicopter lurched toward the ruins of New Orleans to the south, to ground zero. No building or cell tower taller than twenty-five feet remained. The nuclear blast ordered by the government as a last-ditch effort had decimated everything—including the levees. New Orleans was now a decayed, radioactive swamp. Moving south along the shore, Sam and the team scouted a place to extract the next and final specimen.

  “Interstate 610 is just below. I won’t go as low as we did over the causeway. It’s a lot hotter down there,” Sam told Doc.

  “I don’t blame you, Sam. Check out that on-ramp,” Doc said, pointing through the cockpit glass.

  Sam lowered the helicopter down, closer to the I-610 on-ramp. “Yeah, that’ll probably work. You’re gonna have to take care of that business down there first.”

  “Hawse is already on it,” Doc said, pointing back to the cargo area where Hawse lay in the prone at the open side door, with a LaRue Tactical 7.62 sniper rifle welded to his cheek. The 10x optic would provide Hawse a crystal-clear magnified view of the situation on the ground. Sam began to orbit around the LZ like an AC-130 Spectre gunship. Hawse went to work. Billy had a shoulder bag full of twenty round 7.62 mags ready to feed the gun.

  Looking through the binoculars, Billy started calling out targets and estimated range. “North side of black Subaru Forester, near hood, two-hundred.”

  Hawse exploded the creature’s neck and face, sending the head flying on a volleyball-serve trajectory. White fragments of bone sprayed the hood of the Subaru, resembling artwork that might have sold at auction years earlier for thousands. Hawse slowly exhaled just before taking the next shot. Billy kept calling them out and Hawse kept popping their heads, missing some as the helicopter pitched and orbited. This wasn’t easy shooting.

  The undead were now attracted to the helicopter noise and most had moved away from the target area.

  The team needed to be fast, as the helicopter noise would draw the creatures back to the extraction point quickly. Hawse stowed the 7.62 gun and unslung his orange-stripe-painted M-4 carbine. It was easy to lose your carbine in the crowd when everyone carried them. Sam nosed the bird forward and the men once again made ready to rappel into hell. Masks were secured in place for the descent as they hovered one hundred feet above the radioactive mess below.

  “Okay, hook up, let’s get this over with!” Doc screamed loudly into his radio over the rotor noise.

  “Hell yeah. Let’s do this. Warm shower here I come!” Hawse yelled as he hooked up and stepped off the helicopter into the wind.

  The other two followed, leaving Hammer behind. Their descent was twice as far this time, a prudent precaution based on the radiation levels they were dipping into. The rotor wash wasn’t as bad when they touched down, but the deadly particles still swirled in lethal dust devils around their faces.

  Billy was looking over at the Big Easy, what was left of her. Most of it was covered in water and radioactive sludge. He could see thousands of creatures slogging through the shallow muck in their direction, waves of them, all converging on the noise epicenter of the rotor blades and helicopter engines. The creatures left a V-shaped wake behind as they waded through the slimy, disease-infested, and radioactive water. All wake tips pointed in their direction.

  “Fucking wasteland,” Billy said loudly as he readied his AK-47.

  The radiated creatures were closing fast.

  Hawse raised his carbine, aiming through his ACOG optic. The optic’s bullet drop was calibrated for military 5.56 ammunition and the crosshairs were graduated for the appropriate drop. No math required. Just match the width of the ACOG reticle to the creature, aim high for the head, pull the trigger, and down goes the body on the other end—in theory. Hawse neutralized four. Billy went to work with his Afghan-liberated AK-47 war trophy and took out three more.

  No one was running suppressed for this mission—there was no need. The helicopter noise eliminated that possibility. Doc took down four more with his carbine, leaving two. He slung the M-4 over his back and reached for the pneumatic net gun, ensuring the capture net was properly loaded and positioned on the gun. Both Doc and Billy shot at the same time. Billy took out the creature that was closing on Doc, and Doc netted his target specimen. Mission accomplished, almost.

  They stood in a low stance with their backs to the netted creature and watched as the locust-like swarm of undead approached from all directions. By gust of wind, the winch hook contacted the netted creature, shocking it fiercely. Its eyes bulged, and it bellowed and clawed in anger. The built-up static from the helicopter would have knocked one of the men off their feet if not grounded before contact. Now that the electricity was discharged from the hook, Hawse connected the corpse to the net and watched the captured creature spin about and rise the hundred feet to the helicopter door. The NOLA swarm was building and getting closer, the moans overpowering the rotor blades above. The knee-deep water seemed to boil with movement two hundred meters out.

  Billy started to engage with the AK-47. The 7.62x39 round had a bit more punch than Doc’s or Hawse’s M-4 carbines, but the AK was somewhat less accurate. You couldn’t tell with Billy behind the gun—he was dropping them at two hundred plus meters with iron sights.

  The creatures were closing fast, hundreds, perhaps a thousand of them now.

  Billy noticed a shadow flash by in front of him and jumped away from the group. Both Hawse and Doc were knocked to the ground, the wind pushed out of their lungs—the creature they had just captured and sent up to the helicopter had fallen one hundred feet to the ground, free from the netting, with Hammer in its grip.

  Hammer’s left arm was clearly broken, a piece of bone jutting from his forearm. Doc couldn’t tell if the break was from the fall or the creature’s grip. The thing had bitten him severely. His neck was leaking blood in cadence with his rapid heartbeat.

  Hammer reached down to his waist to retrieve the only weapon he had on him when he fell—his tomahawk.

  The radiated creature wrestled with Hammer.

  The NOLA swarm was a hundred yards out.

  Tears of fear and rage flashed in Hammer’s eyes when he gripped the Micarta scales of the handle and swung the hawk, driving the spike deep into the creature’s cranium, dropping it instantaneously. Hammer’s mask had been torn off by the creature before he fell—mortally wounded, already exposed to lethal doses of New Orleans radiation.

  As Doc and Hawse recovered and pulled themselves off the ground, Billy grabbed clotting agent from his med kit and quickly slapped it on Hammer’s neck. He applied a bandage to put some pressure on the
wound. It would at least buy him some time.

  Before anyone asked, Hammer laboriously held his neck wound and said, “They’re strong and fast. Ripped . . . right through the net.”

  Some blood dripped from Hammer’s mouth as he spoke.

  Hammer looked over to Billy. “Trade me.” He handed Billy his bloody tomahawk and Hammer took Billy’s AK. “We still got a mission. I’m not gonna last long. I’ll let one through so you can bag it. Reload that net gun and let’s go.”

  Doc was shaken by Hammer’s ghostlike appearance. He had no clue as to how Hammer kept conscious. Doc compartmentalized the horror of seeing his teammate’s life force fade in front of his eyes. He’d somehow save the emotions for later.

  The three hugged Hammer and shook his hand before saying good-bye. There was no time for more. Hammer nodded to all three and turned to engage. He managed to get to the nearest front of undead and began shooting.

  Doc reloaded the net gun and radioed up to Sam, “Bring her down or we’re all dead!”

  Sam didn’t bicker. Inside of thirty seconds, the helicopter was hovering ten feet above the team, kicking dust, debris, and walking dead everywhere.

  Hammer fought with everything that was left in him, emptying his magazine, allowing one creature through to attack the others near the hovering helicopter. Doc bagged the creature and all three men hurriedly dragged it inside the flying machine. Hammer was right—these radiated abominations were stronger than anything he’d encountered. It nearly breached the fresh net in the time it took the three of them to throw it in the steel cage. It was now no mystery how the second specimen got through the net; it had a hundred feet of winch ascent to rip and claw before getting to Hammer. Doc estimated that the strength of the second specimen must have been many times that of the first from the causeway.

  The rest was a blur. They had both their snarling, powerful specimens securely stored in the hardened, partitioned steel cages. The helicopter gained altitude. Doc asked Sam to hold at two hundred feet. The team watched the scene below as Hammer was making his last stand against the undead with only his knife. He stabbed and slashed and killed three more before they rushed him. Doc moved to the rack, grabbed the scoped LaRue 7.62 and went prone. Through the glass, he confirmed that Hammer was dead, the creatures viciously feeding on his warm, radioactive remains. Anger shot through Doc’s body and he cursed them all to hell before paying final respects to Hammer with a sniper round through his skull. Hammer would not become one of those things down there. He hoped that Hammer would have done him the same courtesy. Doc looked out over the decimated and decaying NOLA skyline.