by J. L. Bourne
Chinese Waters
“Chief of the Boat, periscope depth,” Larsen commanded.
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
After the order was relayed to the helmsman, the boat began its journey to an area just below the surface of the Bohai waters. The periscope was raised, cutting above and through the blue-green waters of the surface. Virginia’s advanced sensors had shown no evidence of any surviving Chinese military power. If remnants of the Sino military remained, they would likely be in the same condition as the U.S. military—spread thin, nearly extinct. Commie monitored the RF spectrum; the only Chinese transmission he intercepted was Beijing International’s Automated Terminal Information Service. Commie determined that parts of the airport must have been on sustainable power for the transmission to remain active. He kept tuning frequencies—“spinning and grinning” the RF spectrum, self-protecting the submarine, and attempting to gather any shred of intelligence that might assist the mission.
Peering through the closed-circuit advanced periscope optic, the captain made an assessment of the mainland.
“Looks like a lot of undead Chinese, COB,” he said, an unlit cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“I could have told you that without looking, sir.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you could’ve. Kil, you in here?”
“Yes, sir,” Kil said, stepping out of the shadows near a bank of equipment.
“Might want to ready the UAV crews. We’ll need airborne reconnaissance of the area and the Chinese airfield.”
“I’ll inform the crew to preflight the birds for launch. Is that all?”
“No, Commander, actually it’s not. I was wondering if you had given any thought to our previous conversations?”
“Yes, sir, I have, and I’m afraid my answer hasn’t changed.”
Larsen leaned closer to Kil. “It’s a shame that Rex and Rico will be working alone, especially so soon after losing Griff and Huck. This’ll be a very difficult undertaking. You want me to inform them or would you like to? I’d like to remind you that our armory is quite extensive, and Beijing was not a target of nuclear weapons. Virginia was a special-operations support ship before everything went to hell, and she still is.”
“I’ll tell them myself, Captain.”
“Very well. Oh, one more thing—we’ll have a little more overhead support for Hourglass than has been previously briefed.”
“How do you mean?”
“Shall we?” Larsen gestured for Kil to follow him to the SCIF.
They walked through the door and were now securely insulated from the rest of the boat. Commie sat at his terminal with Commander Monday over his shoulder, examining the haul of information extracted from the Kunia mission.
Commie sanitized his screen as Kil and Larsen entered the room.
“We’ll have overhead support, SR-71 on steroids. The optics on the bird are much more sensitive and cover exponentially more land mass. The team will know what’s coming before it’s a factor,” Larsen said.
“What air base?” Kil asked skeptically. “We’re a long way from home.”
“I can’t say, mostly because I don’t know.”
“What asset then?”
“Lockheed’s Aurora. She’s actually called something else, but Aurora has been the code name for all of Lockheed’s hypersonic programs dating from the 1960s to now. She’s fast, with a full IMINT and Ground Moving Target Indicator suite. She’ll be supporting at an altitude of angels ninety plus, for a period of six hours.”
“If this thing is flying in from the states, it must have needed some sort of tanker support. When will it be overhead?” Kil asked.
“The COG relayed five days ago that Aurora would be overhead at one thousand GMT tomorrow. Of course, that’s before the carrier went dark, but somehow I don’t think that will be a factor for this asset. As far as tanker support, Aurora doesn’t use JP-5. Maybe when you go talk to Rex to tell him that you won’t be part of the team, you can brief him on it.”
“Thanks for the information, sir.”
“You’re welcome, Kil.”
Kil felt Larsen’s stare as he left the SCIF. The old man was manipulating him, and dammit it was working.
• • •
Kil transited aft inside the large submarine, thinking about what Larsen had said. He was going to pay Rex and Rico a little visit. Kil knocked on their door; he didn’t like intruding into the berthing spaces unless absolutely necessary.
“Who is it?” Kil recognized Rex’s voice from behind the door.
“Kil.”
“Don’t you mean Commander Kil?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Sorry, no officers in the clubhouse.”
Kil decided to walk in anyway. “Listen, the captain tells me that you guys are a go tomorrow. We’re gonna have overhead support starting at ten hundred GMT,” said Kil.
Rex stood, taking the weight off his overstuffed bunk. “What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
Rico slid open the blue curtain on his rack, entering the conversation. “Larsen said this morning that you’ve decided to come with us. That true?” he asked.
“That son of a bitch,” Kil said, shaking his head and balling his fist.
“Don’t worry, we know. Larsen is playing both of us,” Rex said. “We sure could use your help though. We have a full load out here, check it out.” Rex pulled back an empty rack curtain and gestured to the pile of battle rifles. “After the shit hit the fan, scavenger units raided the various military arsenals around the states. Most of those government guns were complete shit. Some of our friends helped us out in one of the last mainland supply raids. They took a couple helicopters and looted a civilian manufacturer’s factory in Central Texas and found these.” Rex pointed at the pile of black rifles, grabbing one and tossing it to Kil. “That’s a LaRue 7.62 with an eighteen-inch barrel. It’ll bloom heads at nine hundred meters if the right shooter is behind it.”
The feel of the battle rifle in Kil’s hands brought back something that had hibernated just under the surface for what seemed like years, since his exile in the Texas badlands of the undead. The weight of the weapon in his hands brought back his feelings of rugged individualism. He reluctantly handed it back to Rex.
“Kil, I can see the wheels turning. Go talk to your friend. Your man is pretty handy with the long gun—don’t think me and Rico didn’t notice in Hawaii.”
“Fuck, yeah! That dude is a downtown killer,” Rico shouted from his rack, wearing one earbud, snapping his fingers to some tune. “Besides, we know you survived in the shit for months. We read all about it, so don’t go giving us some story about not being trained for this. They didn’t go over Zombies 101 in BUD/S or any shit like that, so I think we’re ’bout even.”
Kil stood like a statue for a while before speaking, carefully choosing his words. “We need to start mission planning tonight.”
“Fuck, yeah! I told you, Rex, that he’d be down!” Rico yelled.
Rex tossed the battle rifle back across the room; Kil caught it without blinking. “What are you gonna name her, Kil?”
“I’ll let you know when we get back,” Kil stated without expression. Kil was shocked at his decision, but understood that his choice had been made long before today.
“You sure you want that one? Only twenty round mags and she’s heavy.”
“Let me put it to you this way—about one in six of those things I shot in the dome with my M-4 kept coming at me. If you do the math, you’re only five shots down with the .308 and I’ll guarandamn-tee you that this will put them down. I’ve seen Saien put them to sleep at eight hundred meters. Worth the ammo penalty and the weight if you ask me.”
“Yeah, me and Rico saw that during the Kunia exfil. Some of our rounds skirted the skull; the things stumbled and fell but got back up and kept coming. Not cool.”
Kil turned for the door. “I’m gonna go talk to Saien. Meet me in the SCIF at twenty hundred so w
e can put this thing on paper and see what it looks like.”
“Sounds good. Have a good ’un,” Rex said as Kil ducked out the doorway.
52
Hotel 23—Southeast Texas
“Welcome back, assholes,” Hawse said by way of greeting as Doc, Billy, and Disco returned from the C-130 crash site.
Doc carried something large and orange strapped to his ruck. “Did they tell you what we got, Hawse?”
“Yeah, your relay worked. The A-10 guys are running out of folks, but they passed your comms. The carrier sent a file to the burst laptop that can pull the GPS coords from that box. They said there should be a USB port underneath the outer shell.”
“Okay, let’s get on it. I wanna know where these motherfuckers are hiding,” Doc said.
“One more thing, boss. I lost comms with the carrier.”
“What? I thought you told me they sent you the black box program.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t been able to hail them since. No response on primary, alternate, or tertiary channels.”
“Just fix it, Hawse. I don’t know what the big picture is, but I know that something is going down soon. They briefed us that we should be ready around the new year before we jumped into this shit box.”
“I’ll do my best, man. Our gear is working fine, known good. All bit checks are green, full connectivity with the bird. It’s on their end, man,” said Hawse.
“God, I hope not. They’re our ride outta here,” Disco said, looking over at Billy sharpening his tomahawk. “What do you think of all this, Billy Boy?”
“I think we should focus on what we can change.”
“Yeah,” Doc said. “Keep on those comms, Hawse. I’m about to go to work on that box with a pry bar and hammer.”
Layers of carbon fiber, steel, aluminum, and other composites protected the guts of the box from crash impact and fire. Doc began carefully prying the shell away from the frame.
The sound of Billy Boy’s tomahawk sliding against a smooth sandstone rock marked the time. Doc watched as Billy shaved part of his face stubble with the crude weapon, indicating its razor sharpness.
“Billy, Hammer never kept that thing as sharp as you do. How long are you going to carry it around?”
“Until I kill a hundred with it.”
After an hour of cursing and bloody knuckles, the USB port was finally exposed.
“Hawse, grab the cord.”
“Uh, okay. I’ll be back in a few weeks. Headed to Best Buy. Wait, I better call ahead to see if they’re open twenty-four hours.”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. No USB cord in this entire facility, with all these computers?”
“Most of this stuff is way low tech. Like nineties-style low tech. Early nineties even—freaking parallel ports. I think—well, never mind.”
“What?”
“It won’t work. We’d need to bring down a critical system,” Hawse claimed.
“Screw the critical system! We’re one USB cable away from figuring out where the bad guys might be. What were you going to say?” Doc pressured.
“Well, there is a USB cable topside with the burst antenna array. We’d need to go up there, unplug the cord, bringing down burst comms to use it. Up to you, man, but what if we miss the comms from the carrier because we’re playing around with this orange box?”
“It’s worth it. Billy, you and Hawse go up there now. Hurry up, the sun will be up soon.”
“We’re on it,” Hawse said.
• • •
The men were topside as the sun approached the eastern horizon. The sky was dark blue, stars fading. Too dim for the naked eye, but too bright for night vision. “Dude, I’m going off NODs,” Hawse said.
Billy looked over through his green electronic eyes. “I’m not.”
“The thing is right up here,” Hawse said. “Let’s hurry up and get back down. I’m feeling creeped out, like we’re surrounded or something. Like one of those cartoons, lights out, but eyes watching from everywhere.”
“Stop talking,” Billy said in a whisper as he stopped to sniff the air and scan his surroundings.
“What is it? See something?”
“No—let’s get this over with.”
They reached the burst comm unit and began to dismantle the waterproof shield that covered the cable connection. The top of the sun broke over the eastern horizon.
With little warning, two creatures sprinted from the tall Texas brush like velociraptors, closing on Hawse and Billy as they fumbled with the equipment. The eager grunts of flesh hunger gave away the undead’s attack.
“What the—contact!” Hawse screamed, swinging his weapon around and firing from the hip.
Billy dropped the comms equipment, pulling his sidearm. His rifle was slung behind his back to work the electronics, making it difficult to retrieve quickly. Hawse’s carbine shots glanced off the advancing creature’s shoulder, temporarily knocking it back.
Billy drew down on the trailing fast-mover with his Glock, dropping the thing in its tracks with two shots, one to the neck, the second to the head. The lead creature, virtually unaffected by the shoulder injury, screamed forward into Hawse’s carbine barrel, and swatted at his face. Billy tried to help but couldn’t shoot without the risk of killing Hawse in the process. Hawse squeezed off ten rounds, all of which blew through the creature’s stomach, having no effect. The creature’s inert and rotting internal organs spilled onto Hawse’s boots.
His rifle barrel began to sink into the creature’s open stomach as it advanced on him. He couldn’t maneuver his rifle to aim at the corpse’s head. It kept thrashing and screaming forward, taking all of Hawse’s strength to keep it at bay.
Neither man saw any hint of humanity from what stood in front of them. The creature was swollen, hairless, and missing most of its teeth; pants torn away from the thighs down, shoes worn through to bare, nearly skeletal feet.
Billy shifted his Glock to his weak hand and pulled his tomahawk. Maneuvering behind the creature, he drew back, slamming down on the creature’s skull with immense force. The creature’s head was cleaved in half all the way down to its shoulders, exposing skull, brains, and spinal cord beneath. It slumped to the dirt, sliding off the barrel of Hawse’s weapon. Hawse still pointed his gun forward, now aimed directly, but unintentionally, at Billy Boy’s torso.
“Move that goddamned thing,” said Billy.
“Yeah. S—sorry.”
“They came fast—we almost bought it, man! They were hunting us. I felt something looking at me from the bushes. You?”
Billy wiped his tomahawk on the brown grass and said, “Yeah. I felt something.” He walked back to the electronics, taking off his NODs.
By this time, the sun was over the horizon, prompting a need for speed and efficiency.
“It’s under the foam in this Pelican case, below the transceiver,” Hawse uttered quietly, checking his back sporadically.
“Focus, Hawse,” said Billy. “Just pull the cable and let’s get back down.”
After a minute of following the cable through a maze of other wires, Hawse carefully detached it from the CPU encryptor connected to one of the other small comms boxes. He used a silver Sharpie from his chest rig and marked the cable location so they could return it quickly after pulling the flight recorder data.
They ran back to the access hatch, killing two more stalkers along the way. The surrounding fields closed in around them. The creatures were stalking them. Both Hawse and Billy could see silhouettes at the tree line. They had little choice now but to believe the written reports from this facility’s former officer in charge. Fear would not dilute reality; Billy and Hawse later reported that they felt a thousand undead eyes on them as they sprinted back underground with the cheap but now priceless cable.
53
“Saien, we need to talk,” Kil said, entering the stateroom where Saien feverishly played on a small touch-screen tablet. “Where did you get that?” Kil asked, confused at the sight of
Saien playing anything.
“One of the sailors let me borrow it in exchange for long-range shooting lessons. Right now I’m using some plants to kill . . . well, never mind. I’m sure you and I can work out a deal if you wish to play,” Saien said, smiling.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Put down the game. I’ve got to talk to you.”
“What is it?” Saien said, turning off the tablet.
“We’re in Chinese waters and less than a mile from the coast. I’ve looked through the periscope; it’s pretty crowded with the creatures, at least on the Bohai coast. Anyway, Hourglass is making landfall tomorrow after the UAVs fly a few reconnaissance sorties.”
“Go on,” Saien said.
Kil blurted out, “The team lost two men in Hawaii and I think I’m insane enough to be going with them.”
“Well, that is a change of heart, is it not? I didn’t peg you for the type that takes risk, and this is very, very risky. You would be dead by now if you took chances like this during the lively times we had in America.”
“Yeah, there is a chance I might not make it back. Which is why I need you to hold on to something for me.”
“And what would that be?”
“My journal. I want Tara to have it, and I don’t trust anyone else here with it. There are scribbles about you inside, but I have nothing to hide. Not anything I wouldn’t say to your face.”
“I’m going to have to decline. I cannot do it,” Saien said, brimming with seriousness.
“But I think it’s the least you could—”
“I told you, no. I will see China with you and the others, and we will finish this treacherous chapter in that journal. Together.”
Kil let that sink in. “Saien, I can’t thank you enough, man. I know Rex and Rico are good people, but they haven’t driven tanks off bridges with me or fought off hordes of those things or slept on top of coal cars. You get my meaning?”
“Yes. I get you. When do we make the plans?” Saien asked.
“We meet in the SCIF in ninety minutes. I’ll go over what I already know so both of us are on the same page.”
Kil proceeded to remind Saien about John’s encoded messages and to inform him about the overhead support they would likely be receiving during the operation.