by J. L. Bourne
Jan slid off her stainless metal stool and stood up. “Like what?”
“Well, for one, I used the medical Geiger. The brain material registered significant spikes of radiation. Not enough to harm anyone, as the brain sample was too small, but it was enough to let me know a few things. Enough to let me know that the piece of brain was a part of a frontal lobe that likely belonged to one of those creatures. Not the ones that move like a sloth—one of the radiated. The most alarming thing was that no one had conducted a mainland reconnaissance or salvage operation in the two weeks prior to me receiving the sample. It was very cold when I took possession—refrigerated. Much cooler than room temperature; I remember documenting that.”
“Well, what do we do?”
“Nothing, Jan. We do nothing and go on about our business. There’s no point in rocking the boat.”
Disgusted, Jan walked out of the infirmary without taking off her lab coat or saying good-bye.
Bricker shouted down the passageway, “Jan, that’s between us. Okay?”
Jan thought for a moment that she might put up her hand and flip Bricker the bird on the way, but her better judgment told her that wouldn’t help anything either way.
35
Task Force Hourglass—Hawaii
The RHIB hit the Oahu sand at twenty knots, jarring the operators from their positions onboard the small craft. Rico wiped the water spray from his hood and NODs and took the shot. Other suppressed carbines followed. Shooting accurately proved difficult through the hood’s distorted view, but the undead didn’t know the difference, dropping to the sand, surf washing over them.
They fought inland, using darkness to avoid many of the creatures. They used weapon-mounted IR lasers to designate targets, avoiding the engagement of the same creature twice. The men systematically killed in teams. Commie reloaded magazines when he could.
Slogging inland, they saw the wreckage of a large sailboat sitting in their path, the victim of a tsunami or rogue wave. Badly decomposed creatures hung from doors, hatches, and torn sail rigging. They still moved.
The UAV above their heads reported that there were no hordes in wait behind the boat, but the concentration of undead remained high. Not quite as Gucci as Predator, but it would have to do. Even if they did have Predator, it required massive manpower and a full-up airfield for launch and recovery—not something they enjoyed on the stern yardage of a fast-attack nuclear submarine. The Scan Eagle flew low, and the men could hear the comforting hum of the small engine. So could the undead.
Griff called out the heading: “One-five-one degrees to target. Nine miles.”
“Roger that, Griff, keep us on track line,” Rex said.
Another transmission keyed in—Kil’s voice came through. “Scan Eagle has you one mile inland. High density for another two miles until you break through the creature belt. We see only four glint tabs. Anyone have glint covered up?”
Rex stopped the group, forcing an instinctive defensive formation where all operators faced outward, backs to one another, protecting their high-value asset: Commie. “Okay, guys, you heard the boat. Check your glint. They need to see us to mark the threat.”
All five men hit their IR weapon lights, and green light filled their NODs. They looked for a one-by-one-inch piece of IR reflective tape that each wore to indicate their positions to the UAV orbiting above.
“Shit, man, it was me. Sorry.” Huck ripped the velcro American flag patch off his protective suit sleeve, revealing the glint tab beneath.
“Karma for being a prick, man,” Rico replied, never missing a chance to put Huck in his place.
“Virginia, how many do you see now?” Rex asked over the radio.
“That’s it, I see all five now, break.”
“Be advised, recommend you move heading one-eight-zero for a klick. Massive group up ahead at one-five-zero, three hundred meters your position.”
“Roger, avoiding,” Rex replied.
The men adjusted their course farther to the south to steer clear of the mass of undead. Rex looked down to the portable radiation sensor on his belt. The levels were high, but not outside the protection capabilities of their suits. Kunia was less than nine miles inland and, according to the blast modeling, should be within radiation survivability parameters as long as suit integrity held.
Hopefully.
“Tangoes thirty meters, engaging,” Rico said to the others. Rex shot a round, dispatching an undead child. He forced this fragment of horror out of his head to kill the next in line.
Click.
Goddamned double feed, he thought. Rex dropped the mag, yanking the bolt back, and jammed his fingers inside the magazine well. He fumbled with his radiation gloves for a bit before the two dented rounds fell from the weapon to the ground. Rex slammed in another magazine right before Rico blasted, spraying radioactive fragments of flesh over the face of Rex’s hood. Rex passed Rico a nod as he wiped the material from his mask. Better to be filthy and alive.
The ammunition weight alone in their packs was staggering, but lessened by the minute as they engaged viciously and broke contact. The theme was rinsed and repeated most of the night. They slogged over the hilly, warm Hawaiian terrain for hours—killing when they had to, evading most other times.
Not wanting to risk a suit breach, they were careful not to touch their rifles’ front sight posts; the barrels were blazing hot when they punched through the two-mile belt of undead that circled the island.
At midnight, they reached the home stretch of the nearly ten-mile march to the tunnel facility. Only the speed and maneuverability of their short, suppressed carbines and the security of the night saved them from being torn apart. The UAV support also saved their lives half a dozen times along the way. Rex marveled at the speed and ferocity of the creatures, flinching at every sprint attack attempted against the team. Weary with fatigue and sweating inside their exposure suits, they finally arrived at Kunia.
The tunnel parking lot was as packed as any typical workday, another lost relic of a dead world. The dusty cars sat unevenly on the paved parking surface. Some of them had burned down to the ground long ago, the intense heat melting paint and rubber and cracking the glass on nearby cars. The parking area was fairly clear of undead, except for a few stragglers that wandered around the steps leading up to the cave.
The team formed up near one of the boulders that marked the parking boundaries, preparing to make an assault on the tunnel.
“Okay, Commie, go over it again,” Rex demanded.
“Yes, sir. Those doors at the top of the stairs there lead to a one-quarter-mile tunnel that goes under that hill there. At the end of the tunnel, there are sets of turnstiles to the right. We’ll need a way to get through those; they are full-body revolving doors. If the place were still under power, my IC badge would get us through. After we make it through the turnstiles, the generators are right up from the target. Bottom line: quarter mile into the tunnel, take a right, take a left. The place we need is on the left. Generators are farther down on the right.”
They consulted their hand-drawn maps and compared target locations. They all had laminated copies provided to them on-board the Virginia. A suppressed shot interrupted the silence—it was Commie.
A creature hit the parking lot with a thump a few meters away behind a parked car.
The radio crackled with the Virginia crypto sync tone: “Hourglass, be advised, we see movement outside the gates. Small flow of creatures, strength fifty, stirring. I’ll let you know if they become a factor. Check in before you enter the tunnel, we’ll be lost comms while you’re inside.”
“Roger that, Virginia,” Rex replied. “Commie, we’re gonna move on the tunnel right now. Stay between us, and for Christ’s sake don’t die. Larsen will crush us all if you do.”
“Aye, sir.”
The men moved to the long staircase that led up to the guard shack. Bodies littered the steps on the way up, some of them still writhing about, disabled. The Geiger was giving a low aud
ible alarm. The stairs were covered with metal roofing, likely absorbing large amounts of radiation in the Honolulu blast event. The five ran quickly up the stairs to escape the radioactivity cooking their suits.
Reaching the top, Commie pointed over a few meters to a small building in front of the tunnel doors. “That’s the guard shack.”
An undead sentry stood inside with an assault rifle still slung across its chest. Its lips had long since rotted away from its mouth. It seemed to grin at the men through the ballistic glass, but it was only an illusion; the creature could see nothing and had no hint of their presence. They could barely see the thing through the layer of death sludge caked on the guard-shack window. The Hawaiian heat had been slow-cooking the creature over the months.
Commie looked through the glass and said quietly, “Visitor IC badges. A whole stack of them in the corner over there. The visitor badges had full access and I doubt they changed the four-digit visitor codes. I had to escort VIPs inside this facility—senators, generals, admirals, everyone. You’d be surprised at how many couldn’t work the security doors and just gave me their visitor codes and badges so that I could badge them in and out. The even badges use codes 1952 and the odd badges use codes 1949. The power is no doubt off inside but we may need a couple of them for when we restore limited power, if only to prop some of the security doors open.”
“Roger that. Rico, kill that guard and swipe those badges.”
Rico nodded his head and kicked the door jam with a loud thud. It didn’t budge, but the creature stirred, striking the door. The smacking sound of putrid flesh slapping the door caused Commie to double over, dry heaving inside his suit.
“Master key?” Rico asked.
“Not yet. Commie, how do we get the cave doors open?”
“Hold on a sec,” Commie said between dry heaves. “There’s a manual access there near the doors that requires a hand crank. It’s secured with a padlock. The key and crank handle are inside the shack.”
“Are you fucking sure?” Rex said, his voice filled with tension.
“Yes, sir, I’m sure. I stood this watch when I was the new guy. It’s under the desk on the floor. Had to check it for power-failure drills.”
“Rico, master key!” Rex exclaimed.
“Everyone back, get ready to move!” Rico pulled his sawed-off Remington shotgun from the leather holster on his back, flipping off the safety. He always kept a round in the hole. He pulled the trigger and shredded the wooden guard-shack door around the lock. Only a hole remained where the doorknob once was. Rico kicked the shit out of the door again.
The door flew inward and knocked the creature to the floor, onto its face. It attempted to get back up, but Rico pulled the knife from his belt, stabbing it in the back of its soft, half-rotted skull. He was careful not to thrust too hard as he didn’t want to damage the tip of his blade by going too far through the head into the concrete floor. With the bottom of his boot, he yanked the knife from the skull and wiped it on the guard-shack seat. The smell would have been overwhelming if it were not for the suits.
“Okay, five badges in here, no hand crank!” Rico yelled out the door. He knew there was no point in being quiet after the shotgun blast.
Huck glanced away from his sector of cover and risked a look down the steps. “Rex, they’re on us, man, bottom of steps,” he said calmly.
Rex ran into the guard shack to help Rico look for the hand crank. “Rico, grab ’em. We gotta move. They’re coming up the steps.”
Both Rico and Rex ran out of the shack and looked at Commie, flashing anger in their eyes. “Commie, what the fuck?”
“I don’t know; that’s where it was!” Commie said nervously, adjusting his NODs, looking around the area.
Griff was at the top of the steps, weapon ready and pointed down at the creatures stumbling up the stairs. Griff watched while the others dashed to the door, attempting to gain access using their fingers—the steel door was fifteen feet tall.
Commie moved to the other end of the huge door, hitting his shin hard on something. “Fuck! That hurt,” he shouted, looking down. “Found it!”
The hand crank was already inserted into the hydraulic panel. Commie quickly turned it as fast as he could; the door creaked and strained. It opened one quarter of a centimeter per full turn—a slow undertaking. Bits of rust flaked from the hinges of the massive doors as they slowly creaked outward.
Griff yelled back to the group from the top of the stairs a few meters away. “I’m engaging, there’s too many! Thirty seconds!”
That was all they had left before all hell broke loose and undead would start their advance up the steps to rip them all apart. It was only fifteen meters from the top of the stairs to the doors that Commie was feverishly working to open. The door was a few inches wide now. Griff kept shooting, stacking them up on the stairs below. Surgical with his shots, he neutralized creatures he felt might fall a certain way to block the flow behind, buying a little time.
Commie turned the crank to the point of muscle failure. “My arms are toast—someone else jump in.”
Huck jumped in on the hand crank and started spinning for his life. The door was now open nearly a foot wide.
Griff yelled back, “Commie, get your ass over here and start shooting!”
“Moving!” Commie replied, mimicking brevity he’d heard along the way to the cave.
“Be damn careful, Commie, fall back if they get closer than ten feet!” Rex reminded him, covering Huck.
Commie and Griff blasted away with their suppressed carbines. Some of the rounds passed through the creatures and ricocheted off the concrete steps, hitting the metal roof and parked cars. The creatures continued their relentless march up the steps at them.
The undead got so close that Rex witnessed Griff brand them with the end of his gun, pushing them back. His suppressor was so hot from expelled gas that the creature’s skin would sizzle just before Griff pulled the trigger, scattering brain all over the steps below, toppling corpses back down the stairway to hell. If not for the darkness, all of them would already be dead. The creatures were that fast.
“Commie, take two steps back. They’re advancing.”
Commie complied and kept gunning.
“It’s open enough,” Rex said from nearby the doors. “Get your asses in here!”
Both Commie and Griff walked backward, shooting the whole way to the door. One by one they dropped their packs and threw them through the opening. Rex had just cleared the immediate area inside the cave doors but had no idea what lurked farther back in the tunnel. Relying on moonlight and NVGs, it was pitch-green beyond fifteen meters. He didn’t have time to turn on his IR weapon light to sweep it further, revealing the blackness.
Commie squeezed through the door into the cave. It smelled of death and mildew inside. He thought creatures might be close. “How are we going to close the door behind us?”
The dead were screaming now.
All five were in the tunnel now, the door frozen at eighteen inches open. Rex looked outside, seeing those things throng about. They already filled the guard shack and Rex knew that they would soon be flowing to the cave entrance.
“Any ideas?” Rex solicited.
The radio crackled. “Hourglass, Scan Eagle is indicating a swarm event developing in your area. Looks like the creatures are beginning to rally on your posit,” an unfamiliar voice said over the net.
“Roger,” Rex answered rolling his eyes. “No shit.”
Rico began firing his carbine out the door at the creatures—they were getting curious. Because the door was open at an unfortunate angle, he had to hang his torso completely out to control his carbine shots.
Looking around the tunnel with his IR light, Huck found a pillow-top mattress sitting against the wall on top of a box spring. “Rex, give me a hand with this.”
They slid the mattress vertically into the eighteen-inch gap of the open door just before a creature was about to poke its head in. It was a snug fit, but o
nly a temporary fix.
“We need to stack a load of shit here to keep the mattress in,” Rex said to the others.
Everyone fanned out in the immediate area, looking for debris or anything that might be used to barricade the door. Commie began to walk deeper into the tunnel.
“Not too far, Commie—the old man ordered me not to let you out of my sight,” Rex said.
“Yes, sir, you got it. I see something up ahead.”
A golf cart. Rex followed Commie for a closer look. The small battery-powered cart was used as a shuttle to transport VIPs back and forth to each end of the long underground tunnel. It was marked with a removable sign that displayed a blue background and four white stars.
“Looks like a four star was the last to ride on this. Let’s push it to the door,” Rex suggested as he stomped on the pedal, releasing the brake.
They both moved quickly, pushing the cart to the opening. All five men grunted, lifting the cart, placing it parallel to the door. It was tight against the mattress that plugged the undead leak. Rex reengaged the braking mechanism, holding the car in place. The sounds of bony fists were loud against the steel while the men stood in a circle to gather their thoughts.
“Virginia, this is Hourglass. We’re inside—keep an eye on the door. If you see them getting in, give us a shout. One of us will stay near the entrance to keep comms up with your station,” Rex transmitted.
The reply came in a bit weak, but readable. “Roger that, Hourglass. I’m on it.” It was Kil’s voice this time; Rex’s eyes did not roll.
The very fact they’d even made it to the cave was remarkable. There they were, a mattress and a golf cart between them and certain undeath, on a radioactive island wasteland inside a defunct top-secret facility. Easy day.
• • •
Kil was in the control room now and ordered the UAV pilots to adjust orbit over the cave door as requested. One of the men gave attitude regarding the order, causing Kil to hammer him back in line by threatening to personally send the man to the cave entrance to watch the door. Kil was nervous about the situation on the ground ten miles away, but made sure to project confidence on the radio. He had read books on the Apollo 13 mission and remembered how important it was for mission control to keep their cool with the astronauts. Although he was safe on the submarine, he still understood the value of projecting confidence to those that needed it.