by Sawyer, JT
“Troop numbers?”
“It was a small unit of twenty men. They engaged over a hundred hostiles before going radio silent.” The young man cleared his throat. “They said the creatures were carrying out crates full of supplies. This is the second report we’ve received about aberrant behavior like this coming out of the Savannah region in the past three days.”
Dorr looked at Hemmings then over at the dark-haired officer. “Aberrant behavior is the only consistent trait associated with these things, it seems.” His eyes darted over at the computer monitor to his right. “Pull up SAT imagery for that area and see if you can pinpoint any significant clusters of drones or alphas, then send it to me here.”
***
Jonas Runa had just gotten off the Blackhawk at the west end of MacDill after returning from the Lachesis. He had spent the past day overseeing the inventory inspection on board the agency vessel and helping the newly assigned army medical staff with retrofitting the lab for large-scale production of Selene’s bioagent. After walking across the airfield, he made a beeline for his quarters in the NCO building. Cutting across the parking lot, he saw Jody assisting a group of civilians loading a truck with cases of bottled water and dehydrated food. Jody paused when she saw him, wiping the heavy line of sweat from her forehead before trotting over to him.
Runa was nearly knocked over by her exuberant embrace as she flung her arms around his waist in a hug. “Whoa, you sure got a lot of energy for someone doing back-breaking work.”
“A little more than you—you look tired.” She stepped back, smiling.
She was as perceptive as her brother, and he could see Will’s scrutinizing gaze in her glance. “That obvious, eh?” He rubbed the right side of his neck. “Been working on board the ship the past twenty-four hours without much sleep. The good news is that the Lachesis is almost ready for being the research vessel we need for this next phase.”
“The operation—I heard people talkin’ about something big coming up but didn’t get any details. Plus, the base is crazy busy with activity.”
Runa nodded. “Dorr and Hemmings want to keep a tight lid on things, given the enemy’s abilities. Seems like just when we think we know what we’re up against, they surprise us again.” He didn’t mention anything about the comatose alpha on board the ship. It had been subdued by the captain before Runa’s arrival and was found in possession of synthetic hormones that revealed a new level of sophistication and intelligence that had shocked even Selene. Thank God that thing has more sedatives in its system than a rock star after a concert. If it were me, I’d fling it overboard, but maybe it’ll still serve some purpose.
She interlaced her fingers and shifted her weight to one foot. “Any word from Will?”
“Nothing in the past two days. I know he and his team are busy working with Selene at the CDC on this research of hers, but they’re operating with a skeleton crew there, so things are slow going.” He wished he could reveal the incredible breakthrough Selene had made in developing a bioagent that could kill the drones but, like in his previous role at Langley, things had to be kept on a need-to-know basis. The alphas were too interconnected, and if information leaked out in some way, it could be a disaster for the strike teams on the ground.
Jody looked back at the parking lot, where the workers finished stacking the last box in the truck and slammed the tailgate. “Seems like everyone is reduced to a skeleton crew these days, no matter what the job.” She lowered her eyes. “There are just so few of us left.”
Runa stepped forward, resting his hand on her shoulder. “Keep your spirits up—we’ll get through this.” He waved his arm out towards the array of buildings, soldiers, and the fixed wing aircraft in the distance. “This is the heart of special operations—you couldn’t be in a better place for riding this out.” Jody turned when she heard the truck’s engine start.
“I gotta run.” She gave him a quick hug and jogged back to the parking lot. “Maybe I’ll see you around later.”
“That’d be great.” He knew their paths weren’t likely to cross for a while. He was due for a briefing with Dorr and then would be working on an intel team during Operation Overlord. Runa grabbed his backpack and stared up at a massive cumulonimbus cloud forming over the ocean. Seems like there’s always a storm coming these days—every day. I just hope we can ride this next one out.
Chapter 8
After spending most of the morning walking along the western edge of the Colorado River, Kelly still couldn’t see any signs of habitation in the barren landscape. The river curved to the north and was obscured by a peninsula of boulders on either side that seemed to muscle together in a geologically futile attempt to thwart its passage. In the area directly ahead and to the south, the mighty Colorado looked more like a lake, and it was as narrow as a quarter-mile in some stretches, making crossing it unrealistic. In another reality, it would have made a lovely postcard with the sandy shoreline, groves of swaying cattails, and songbirds flitting through the mesquite groves. The sign along the last stretch of highway several hours ago indicated they had entered Chemehuevi Indian land and that there was a casino and hotel on the shores of the Colorado, though she now realized that they must have cut too far north and missed that section of the river.
They had stopped under a grove of mesquites near the beach an hour ago to get their fill of water, which Kelly strained through her baseball cap to remove the bigger chunks before filling several discarded pop bottles they had found littering the beach. Cassie had hardly said a word since the attack near the bus and Kelly knew her daughter was still in shock from the tumultuous events of the past few days since they left Joshua Tree. No child should ever have to witness such horrors and loss. She thought of all the stories of war in far-off lands that her husband had spoken of after his deployments—all the children left without parents, struggling to survive in a ravaged landscape that had once been their home. Now, a war is here—it’s everywhere around the world. No place is left untouched. She had to force away the latter thought and hold out hope that Raven’s Keep was the sanctuary it claimed to be on the radio. But why would they broadcast on the airwaves for survivors to come to their location? It wasn’t a government broadcast so what would motivate a group of civilians to draw others to them—unless it was a religious or humanitarian group. She raised an eyebrow at the thought, then shook her head, realizing they didn’t have much choice except to find the place.
“You get enough to drink?” said Kelly to her daughter.
Cassie nodded, strands of blond hair swishing around her shoulders. She held the plastic Coke bottle up and offered it to her mother, who shook her head and smiled. Then Cassie turned and extended her hand towards Erica. The woman’s expression changed from forlorn to surprised and she took the bottle, swigging down some tepid fluid. Erica then handed it back to the girl and gave a faint nod before standing up. She leaned against a tree, making a deep nasal sound as her nostrils flared then leaning forward to spit on the rocks to her right.
“God, I could really use a cigarette right now,” Erica said. She kicked a rusty soup can into the trees. “This is the most time I ever spent outdoors, except when my foster dad used to have backyard barbecues with all his drunken pals when I was a kid.”
Kelly looked up in astonishment that the woman had said something that wasn’t caustic and directed at her. In the three days since they had met on the road after Kelly’s exodus from Joshua Tree, Erica had been nothing but a prickly thorn in everyone’s side and had done little to contribute to the group except complain.
“You grow up on the mean streets of L.A.?” Kelly said.
She dipped her head then brought it back up again to stare at a lone cloud to the east. “What gave it away—all my tats and piercings? You don’t see that much on the artsy-fartsy streets of Joshua Tree or Palm Springs with all the uptight rich ladies.” She raised her fingers, clawing out air quotes at the latter word.
“Can’t say we ever spent much time in those
towns—we usually stayed at my dad’s old house on the outskirts of the park when my husband was at home.” Cassie slid in closer to her mom, casting her tiny arms around Kelly’s waist.
“Figured you to be one of those fancy ladies who lived in a mansion up on the hillside.”
“Not on the salary my husband brought home from the Navy or on mine as a nurse at the VA in San Diego. My dad built a log-and-stone cabin out in the desert back in the fifties after he got out of the army, before any of those trendy towns were around. When he passed a few years ago, we decided to hang on to it as a place to get away from the noise of the city.”
“So, sounds like your whole life was connected to the military in some way.”
Kelly tossed a smooth pebble into the slow eddy of the river, watching the concentric circles ripple out as she fought back tears for the memory of losing her father and the unknown fate of her husband. “Was…yes, it is.” She quickly sucked in a deep breath and massaged her forehead. “And you—what was your life like before all of this?”
Erica flung a fist-sized rock into the water, the large splash sending splotches of muddy water onto the shoreline. “Complicated—and always on the run.”
“From what?”
Erica smirked, then her eyes narrowed as she shot a glance beyond Kelly’s shoulder towards a grove of mesquite. The lithe woman withdrew her pistol as Kelly hopped to her feet. Turning towards the boulder field, Kelly heard the sound of footfalls crunching along the gritty surface. She reached for her pistol just as four men emerged from behind a thicket of cottonwood trees. They had their AKs leveled at the three women and were moving with determination. The lead figure had a thick black beard and mirror sunglasses. Her stomach was churning as if the universe was about to gut-punch her again like it had on a daily basis since the pandemic began. Suddenly, the scene with the drones back at the bus felt less intimidating, and she knew the unknown variables presented when dealing with her own kind posed just as great a threat to their well-being as the worm-riddled creatures plaguing the world. All of them were dressed in an assortment of military garb and had weapons equipped with nightvision scopes, and it was her inability to peg them as either military or law-enforcement that made her stomach coil further. Kelly could tell that they had training in combat tactics by the fluid way they handled themselves and given how stealthy their approach had been through such unforgiving terrain. They reminded her of private contractors but they could just as easily be a militia group for all she knew.
Kelly removed her hand from the pistol and whispered at Erica to put her weapon away.
“Do it—these guys aren’t like the other thugs we’ve encountered. They’re trained and probably pretty well by the looks of it.”
“That’s mighty kind of you,” said the bearded man. “Why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re all doing, having a picnic out here in the middle of the day?” He pointed his rifle in the air towards the south. “You sure sent up quite a signal fire a few hours back with that exploding bus, alerting all the other crags in the region that there’s fresh meat around. At least, I figure that had to be y’all since there’s no one else crazy enough to be out here in the open desert. We did a little recon with our aerial drones and found the three of you and thought we’d pay a little visit.”
“We were trying to get to some place called Raven’s Keep but those things attacked our van near a gas station earlier this morning,” said Kelly.
“‘Crags,’” said Erica.
“The creatures—that’s what their heads look like when they splinter apart, like a crag in a rock.” He patted the stock of his rifle. “The worms in ’em cause their faces to sorta stick together after an injection of 7.62 rounds. You’ll never see a regular human skull do that.”
Kelly wasn’t sure if she should be more worried about his latter comment or the fact that they were stranded on foot.
“Is Raven’s Keep nearby?” Erica said. “We heard the radio…”
The man laughed, resting his rifle on his shoulder and moving forward. Kelly’s tension eased slightly when he removed his sunglasses. His blue eyes were the color of the river and his stoic veneer softened as he spoke. He balled his fist as he spoke about Raven’s Keep.
“The message on the radio, sure. You’re the lucky ones—we just took that off the air. Too many people coming into our compound in the past few days.” The other men nodded while keeping their eyes affixed on the open desert beyond the trees. “Seems like anybody left in Arizona, Nevada, and California showed up on our doorstep.” He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “Or I should say, beachfront—Raven’s Keep is just over that rise, across the river.” He moved closer to Kelly, tipping his hat and glancing over her features. “Name’s Jared, and our boat is just a few hundred yards to the north. You’re welcome to join us.”
Kelly still wasn’t sure why Jared had spent so much time tracking them down after the bus explosion. Surely it can’t be because they’re solely interested in rescuing other survivors. No way that a band of survivors would allot so many resources to head upriver like this. She pulled the opening of her long-sleeved shirt over her neckline, knowing that the men had all been glancing over her and Erica’s figures since they arrived. There’s gotta be some reason they want us to join their little outfit and I’m not so sure it has to do with their seeming benevolence.
He stepped back, thrusting his chin towards the shoreline. “But don’t take my word for it—come see for yourself. We’ve still got a few spots left in the Promised Land for the right people.”
Chapter 9
Reisner stood before a large table neatly arranged with firearms in the conference room on the third sub-level of the CDC. He and Ivins were doing a final inspection of their armaments and preparing for the briefing by General Dorr and his scientific staff on the nuclear reactor sites.
“Ever been?” said Ivins, nodding up towards the diagram of the Palo Verde Nuclear Reactor on the wall in front of them.
“Not one on this scale,” he said, glancing at the layout of the 4,000-acre facility, which contained three combustion water reactors and was the nation’s largest energy plant, providing nearly forty percent of the electricity for Arizona. “I was a part of a joint DOD team that toured a small reactor in Arkansas years ago to learn more about their safety features and base security measures.” He shook his head. “I hear that this one had close to 2,700 people working at it—seems more like a small town to me by the looks of it.”
“Fortunately, we know where the paras are concentrated so we won’t have to scour the entire place,” said Ivins, placing an MK12 rifle back on the table after inspecting the barrel and chamber.
“Too bad we can’t let the reactors partially melt down and save us the trip.”
“Whoa—don’t even mention that around me. These plants all have backups to their backups built into them to prevent that kinda shit from happening—at least, they did when there were close to three thousand people working there.”
“Now, we’re going to reconfigure the automated systems to operate remotely at MacDill or elsewhere and further strain the staff there.” Reisner shook his head. “You gotta figure, at some point down the road, there’s going to be a major glitch and no one is going to be on site to fix the problem.”
Ivins raised his fists up, letting his fingers flash open. “And then, boom—another Chernobyl. Hell, this is the best solution right now. It beats having nearly a dozen nuke reactors erupting around the continental U.S. and making this country and every other nation downwind uninhabitable for the next century.”
“Chernobyl was different—major design flaws, using graphite rods that couldn’t cool quickly enough after the staff gambled on an experiment.” Reisner paused, his mind reflecting back on the images of that horrific event after a Pentagon briefing he’d been privy to a few years ago. “When that happened in the Soviet Union in ’86 it was catastrophic for that town in the years to follow, but most people in our former adminis
tration relegated it to the history books, unaware that thyroid cancer deaths were still happening until 2011, with victims from outlying areas who had been outside the initial blast radius. Unfortunately, contamination wasn’t limited to the surrounding countries but spread as far as the Scottish Highlands due to weather patterns that year. Even colleagues of mine in Sweden were issued warnings about that area receiving abnormally high levels of fallout from the rains that spring.” Reisner clenched his right fist, cracking a few of his knuckles. “I’m all for securing this facility—I just wonder how many fingers we’re gonna have left to keep plugging all the constantly hemorrhaging dams around the country.”
Ivins gave him a surprised look as the rest of Reisner’s team walked in the room, with Porter moving up alongside him. “Did I miss anything from your doomsday talk?”
“I’m startin’ to think your boss is part Russian scientist with all his talk about Chernobyl and the place we’re about to visit,” Ivins said with a smirk.
“Oh, he knows a little about everything and he’s learning new tricks all the time,” Porter said with a wink, patting Reisner on the shoulder. “It must be all them audio books he listens to.”
Connelly and Nash walked to the other side of the table and began assembling their tactical kits. “Talking about tricks, we got any more intel on the upcoming mission?” said Nash.
Reisner glanced down at his watch. “Dorr is presenting the briefing to all the tac-teams throughout the country in a few minutes. That’s why I called you guys down here.”
“My crew should be rolling in any time now,” said Ivins, looking out into the hallway.