by J. L. Bourne
Some tired laughs ebbed around the room.
“The reason I have called this meeting is to provide an update on Task Force Hourglass. As most of you are aware, they are currently underway, onboard the submarine USS Virginia and a week from Oahu. As the TF commander, I’m privy to information relating to all phases of the Hourglass mission. All of you are read into the special-access program known as Horizon and what likely occurred in China, or at least what we think happened. Phase one of Hourglass has so far been a success, as Virginia continues steaming west with a team of special operators and consultants aboard. Phase two of Hourglass is about to commence—that is the reason we’re here today.”
The admiral paused for a moment, surveying the small crowd while he took a sip of water. “Phase two involves the Nevada specimens. The Continuity of Government has decided to run a test, exposing one of the specimens to the anomaly. We don’t know if CHANG is of the same species as our specimens, but we still may learn a great deal from the experiment. At the very least we may find out why all of our HUMINT assets went dark not long after CHANG was moved to the Bohai region; at most we may find some way to return the contents of Pandora’s box.”
The chatter in the auditorium began to roll in waves and thunder about. One of the officers in the back raised his hand.
“Go ahead, Commander,” the admiral prompted.
In a cautious tone, the commander began. “Sir, we have no idea the effects this might have on the Nevada specimen’s physiology. The Mingyong anomaly was measured by the Chinese at over twenty thousand years old. Our specimens were recovered in the nineteen forties. Was this plan really thought out by the COG or was this only a plan to throw an idea at the wall to see what sticks?”
The admiral glared at the officer. “Well, Commander, I think you make good points, but COG folks with brains larger than ours and that are in power as the result of laws passed by officials elected long ago have decided that this is the best way ahead. Besides that, I propose to you the following: What if Hourglass fails to succeed? What if the Virginia never makes it to China? Then what? These are all reasons we will conduct these experiments. Hourglass may not succeed.”
The admiral scanned the room, surveying reactions. “Right now as we sit here onboard the USS George Washington, preparations are being made to extract one of the damaged specimens from long-term cold storage. I’ll circle back to you on the findings.”
Wild chatter erupted throughout the auditorium.
Breaking through the noise, another officer asked, “Admiral, what if exposing the Nevada specimen is the catalyst that causes the anomaly to jump airborne? We just don’t know. It’s uncharted territory!”
“So is the dead walking. That is all!” Goettleman barked.
“Attention on deck!” Joe called out, before the admiral stood and abruptly departed the room.
23
Arctic
December. Outside was a relentless bombardment of snow and ice. Crusow opened the heavy hatch to the unforgiving atmosphere. Not quite whiteout weather but close. No matter, it would be this or worse the rest of the year and into the next, until spring. If they waited on perfect conditions they’d die hungry and frostbitten. They were well into the long night; probably ninety days of dimness remained before the sun resumed its familiar arc.
Bret arrived from behind Crusow. Kung and Mark would begin readying the dogs to pull up the frozen bodies from the bottom of the gulch soon. It would take Crusow and Bret at least an hour to get to the bottom and secure the bodies to the lines. Crusow left his rifle behind in his quarters and wore only his Bowie knife and ice axe on his hip. They didn’t have moving parts and would not fail him in fifty-below-zero conditions. All the bodies at the bottom of the gulch were frozen solid. Perhaps the polar bears would have a go at them.
Crusow spun around in his snow shoes to face Bret. “You ready for this? Gonna be brutal. Hope you had a big breakfast.”
“Fuck you, Crusow. I’m in no mood for your . . .”
“Good morning to you, too, bitch tits,” Crusow prodded.
Bret didn’t cave on the harassment as Crusow hoped. Their packs were stuffed with rope and rappelling harnesses. Crusow brought a small amount of water and even some food along for energy. With the cold and the moving around in this fur, a man could burn hundreds of calories per hour out there. For good measure he also brought a firelog of compressed wood, an insurance policy if something went wrong and they had to wait on Mark and Kung.
They reached the edge of the gulch; Crusow wondered why they called it that and not a cliff. He leaned over the steep lip and looked down, flipping on his headlamp. Visibility was about thirty feet below the edge—they would be blind most of the way down.
“I’d feel safer tying up to the Sno-Cat for the climb down instead of pounding ice anchors for a top rope,” Bret said to Crusow with some concern in his voice.
“That’d be a great idea if she wasn’t nearly out of juice. It would cost us a quarter-gallon of diesel to get the Sno-Cat started, warmed up, and moved over to the edge. Plus, we don’t know how stable the ice is out here. We could end up falling into that abyss with the Cat chasing us down to the bottom.”
With that, they began hammering their top rope anchors into the solid ice. Three anchors per line were secured in different areas to reduce the chance of losing a line. With all anchors secured, both Crusow and Bret threw their lines out over the edge. They could hear the line slap and tumble down the face. They had a difficult time getting the harnesses out of their packs as their Arctic gloves diminished their dexterity. It was like trying to open a door with your elbows. The wind picked up as the two slipped on their harnesses. They checked each other over, ensuring that their gear was secure for the trip down. Crusow yanked off his snow shoes and tied them to his pack with a bit of cordage. He then clamped the sharp steel snow spikes to his boots and stomped a shelf of ice to see that they were fastened tight.
Crusow reached for the Motorola radio in his coat, fumbling for the transmit button. “Mark, me and Bret are about to start heading down. It’ll probably take about thirty minutes or more to get to the bottom and get set up, over.”
Crusow was accustomed to the HF radio and caught himself closing the transmission by saying over instead of just letting the automated beep do the job.
Mark keyed his radio. “Roger that, man. Kung and I are at the dog paddock and we’re prepping them now. We’ll throw down fresh ropes when you say the word. Our end will be attached to the dogs, your end to the . . . you know. I don’t think we should use the ropes you just rigged to pull them up.”
“Why not? They’ll already be down here.”
“Because the dogs might weaken your anchor points or the friction over the ice could fray the ropes. Bad day if that happens.”
“Good point, thanks. Okay, we’re headed down. Talk soon.”
Mark doubled-clicked the transmit button in acknowledgment.
Crusow didn’t risk his life out of want; things had degraded into dire need. If they could not harvest enough body fat from the corpses below, they would never reach thin ice. Fuel was more valuable than water in this harsh, frozen world.
Crusow reached down to his sides to make sure his tools were secured tightly. Even though his gloves were too thick to feel the texture, just knowing his twelve-inch stag Bowie knife was safe in the leather sheath on his hip made him feel somewhat better. It did any job he asked of it, every time.
“You ready, Bret?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Let’s go.”
They leaned over the edge, paying out slack, and down they went into the void of Clear Conscience Gulch, one of many graveyards of man.
24
Kil sat in his stateroom reading a book. Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein. John had passed him a copy before he boarded the helicopter and told him not to lose it. He remembered that John had an extra copy of the book, identical cover and all. Kil had been immersed in the novel
since he learned the fate of Oahu, as it was an escape from what the mission might be up against. It was a tale of a group of young students, dropped off in a strange land, trying to survive. The scenario depicted in the book was bad, just not nearly as bleak as what Kil saw during his time in exile after the helicopter crash. He reached up to feel the scar on his head as he thought about this for a moment between paragraphs.
Saien was beneath Kil’s rack in the bunk below playing solitaire with an old deck of Afghanistan’s Most Wanted playing cards on top of his sheets. Saien had made efforts to absorb the happenings onboard since his arrival. He told Kil that he’d never thought he would find himself a member of the crew of a fast-attack nuclear-powered submarine, and he’d even taken on work during his time onboard, standing engineering watches. He wasn’t responsible for much, just to monitor gauges to make sure they were inside normal parameters. This allowed some of the overworked engineers to get some much-needed sleep and also made him a few friends in the process. He wasn’t just the awkward and out-of-place foreigner anymore.
Kil turned the page to the next chapter and lost his grip on the paperback, dropping it to the deck below. He swung one leg over the side of his bunk, then he heard Saien.
“I’ll get it, Kil.”
“Thanks.”
Picking up the novel, Saien took a glance at the synopsis on the back before handing it to Kil.
“Why the hell are you reading about this, man? You crazy? Have you not lived this long enough?”
“I know we’ve been underway for a while but are you already getting cranky, Saien? We aren’t even close to getting a beer day.”
“What’s a beer day?” Saien asked.
“It’s when you’ve been underway so long you get to drink a couple beers.”
“I don’t drink, so I don’t care. How about a fresh air and sunlight day?”
“Sorry, Saien, they don’t have those on these boats, I’m afraid. I’ll put in a request to the captain for you if you want,” Kil said, laughing.
“Thanks. I hope you dream about those creatures tonight.”
Kil ignored Saien’s hexing and went back to reading his book. After five pages, Saien interrupted.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I don’t really want you to dream about those things tonight. That wasn’t nice. I’m just not familiar with these conditions.”
“Don’t worry about it, man. We all get cabin fever. It’s just how things roll onboard the boat.”
“Cabin fever? Never mind. I was thinking about what you told me, what the captain mentioned to you about our next destination,” Saien said.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, it’s been exploded to bits by a nuke. You and I both know what that means. There may be hundreds of thousands of those things running around there. Yes, Kil, I did mean running.”
“I don’t like it any more than you. You and I are consultants, and so far I’ve been doing just that. I made my case to the captain, but this is his boat. I personally think he’s crazy for even thinking about making landfall in Hawaii. If it were my decision, I’d pick one of the smaller non-radiated islands and order all surviving warships to set course for it. We could secure it and start over. The surviving leadership doesn’t agree, so here we are, onboard a floating nuclear reactor heading for a nuked paradise, facing nuked corpse armies.”
Saien looked up at Kil with a tinge of disdain on his face. “Now it is you that will give me the nightmares I cursed you to endure. Stupid pig eater.”
Kil laughed at Saien and leaned back down to continue reading his book. “Just don’t make any noises crying for help—I’m trying to read up here.”
A hard thud on his mattress from below indicated Saien’s acknowledgment.
25
Friendships were no longer forged via social networks; they were not born in churches, at parties, or during happy hours. Staying in touch in this time of undead reign harkened back to the dawn of radio. A handful of families still survived, those prescient few that had prepared for calamity. Unfortunately, none had prepared for anything resembling the current state of affairs. Most were concerned about terrorist attacks or financial collapse—a source of mainstream hysteria right before the dead started to walk. Europe and the Middle East were ablaze with civil unrest. The euro had already collapsed; the streets of Spain, France, Ireland, and even Britain were among those littered with police barricades and burning cars, even before the undead filled them.
The survivors huddled quietly in their boarded-over or underground shelters or hidey-holes in Idaho and other non-radioactive places. They tuned their shortwave radios to any frequency that still carried signal—any sound or modulated static that might give temporary reprieve from the permanent terror they endured. This was the new normal.
The majority of the dwindling living U.S. population didn’t enjoy the safety of life onboard an aircraft carrier or inside a strategic nuclear missile silo—they lived in attics, abandoned FEMA centers, prisons, rural cell-phone tower perimeter fences, small coastal islands, and even boats. Some even tried their luck in abandoned rail cars or banks on the outskirts of what was once civilization. From handheld walkie-talkies to citizens band radios to HAMs, they attempted contact with each other, with anyone.
Every now and then, it was established, even if only for a fleeting moment—sometimes the sound heard over the airwaves was splintering wood or screams or the sound of a lonely gunshot. The last social networks were falling, node by node.
USS George Washington
John was now considered the official USS George Washington communications officer, bestowed full access to the ship’s communications arrays. He had a small contingent of civilians and junior enlisted to keep the ship’s meager capabilities up and running. His primary orders were to maintain secure over-the-horizon contact with Task Force Hourglass due off the coast of Hawaii in five days. His secondary mission was to keep a secure laptop SATcom link with Task Force Phoenix, embedded at Hotel 23.
He’d been informed that TF Phoenix’s main objectives were to secure the remaining nuke and attempt to salvage some of the Remote Six airdrops. On top of his duties as the ship’s communications officer, John had been dubbed caucus leader by the Hotel 23 survivors, a title he tried to downplay, but secretly loved.
John made his rounds daily, checking on Tara, Laura, Jan, Will, Dean, Danny, the marines, and others whom he had befriended during his time at Hotel 23. Annabelle, his Italian Greyhound, was still at his side happy and content when Laura wasn’t borrowing her. Her hackles had not risen since she evacuated on the helicopter under the death grip of little Laura. Laura told John that she was sooooooo afraid that she would drop “Annie”—that’s what Laura called her. It was sometimes inconvenient letting her out to do her business, walking all the way down to the hangar bay, where a dog-loving crewmember laid sod over some topsoil for the animals on-board. Annabelle wasn’t the only shipboard canine. A few military working dogs found their new home on the Washington, treating Annabelle like one of their own, as they sensed who the common enemy really was. Any of the undead on the mainland would take down a dog and reduce it to a wet mess if the chance was presented.
John had no shortage of irons in the fire, but there was room for more, he thought. One of his enlisted men, Petty Officer Shure, was a particularly good radio operator. He was having regular luck making contact with Arctic Outpost Four. Last communication was about their fuel supply status and plans to expand it. The rumor going around the radio shack was that the Arctic outpost survivors were actually planning to refine biofuel from the frozen undead they had previously killed and discarded down a cliff, leaving them to freeze solid in the Arctic ice last spring and fall. John had been present during the transmission and knew it was no rumor. The admiral asked that he keep that information confidential; the admiral didn’t fancy the prospect of talk circulating around about their Arctic friends behaving like mad butchers. It was too reminiscent of Kil’s debriefing a
fter his return from the crash; he had run into a band of cannibals that were using the undead as food—actually cooking rotting flesh—somehow neutralizing whatever caused the things to reanimate in the first place.
The shortwave radio link between the Washington and USS Virginia/Task Force Hourglass was becoming very unreliable. The ship’s SATcom worked fine, but many of the satellites required to bounce the signal back to the Gulf of Mexico footprint had already burned up in reentry, their orbits left to decay without National Reconnaissance Office support and orbital adjustment. The SAT-com birds that still functioned in orbit were operating under access codes that no one had, or knew how to get. Shortwave was the main game in town for the military and the rest of the surviving populace.
John called a long overdue but impromptu meeting in the radio room. In attendance were all of his enlisted communicators as well as the civilian HAM operators who had volunteered their knowledge of shortwave communications.
The purpose of the meeting was simple—to establish and improve on the communications plan. John rolled up the projector mat that concealed his white board and began listing all priority circuits and their individual statuses.
Actively maintained circuits in order of precedence:
Secure HF voice circuit with TF Hourglass—PMC
Secure HF teletype circuit with Nevada facility (UKN)—FMC
Secure SATcom burst circuit with TF Phoenix—FMC
Non-secure HF voice circuit with Arctic Outpost Four—PMC
“Now, as you can see here on the board, we have some problems to solve,” he began. “Our top priority circuit is only operating in a partially mission capable, or PMC, status. We have been unable to reach Task Force Hourglass for some time now. We’re going to have to offset this problem. Any ideas?”
One of the HAM radio operators in the back of the room spoke up. “We could try a relay.”