by Kraus, Mike
Relieved beyond belief to see the truck in working condition, she grabbed the keys hanging on the wall just inside the barn and threw them to Mark. “You can ride shotgun; Jacob and Josie, I want you two in the back, please. There aren’t booster seats so we’re going to make sure you’re buckled up tight before we get going, okay?”
There was a chorus of grumbled agreements as the three children piled into the truck. Dianne finished sliding open the barn door before walking around the truck, visually inspecting the tires and making sure there was nothing in the back. “All right, you old thing.” Dianne whispered to herself as she climbed in and put the key in the ignition. “Let’s get going.”
The truck roared to life at the turn of the key and Dianne smiled and sighed with relief. “Everybody ready?”
Without waiting for an answer, Dianne glanced at the rearview mirror to make sure Jacob and Josie had their seatbelts on, then threw the truck into gear. She was used to driving an automatic transmission, but had learned how to drive stick years prior, just in case she was ever in a situation where she needed to know how.
The drive up the slope toward the house was bumpy, and Dianne could hear the truck creaking and groaning in protest. After she drove around the house and gave the burned-out hulk in the driveway a wide berth, the ride settled down as she got onto the dirt driveway.
The drive wound through the woods until coming to a metal gate that was erected a hundred feet from the edge of the property. Dianne rolled down the window as she pulled up to the gate, then glanced over at Mark. “Grab the gate, would you?”
Mark hopped out and swung open the gate, pushing it out away from the truck as Dianne rolled through slowly and parked on the other side. As he closed the gate, Dianne leaned out the window and called out to him. “Go ahead and lock it up for me. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”
“Sure thing, mom.” Mark wrapped a length of chain around the gate and a fencepost before securing it with a large padlock hanging from the fence. It was rare that they locked the gate since they were at home most of the time, but Dianne wasn’t sure who might come wandering by while they were out.
After Mark was back in the truck, Dianne pulled forward again until she reached the end of their driveway. The gravel road beyond was a winding one, with the direction to the right leading into town while the other made its way through the country before dead-ending at a state park. Dianne turned right, heading for Ellisville and—hopefully—some answers about what was going on with the car and the phones.
Chapter 4
US Government Facility
One week before the event
“General Davies?”
“What is it, son?”
A young man wearing a hoodie, blue jeans and sneakers runs down the hall after a tall, white-haired man in a military uniform. The hall is well-lit and sparsely decorated, with no view of the outside world. Offices branch off from the main hall, though the walls for all the rooms are transparent, with no curtains or barriers to keep people from seeing in. People work at computers in the offices, some wearing headphones, some working in small groups, others eating while they type with one hand and some pacing the floor only to rush back and type out a few lines of code. The atmosphere is relaxed, though supervisors and managers stalk the hall, keeping close track of the progress of projects.
General Davies stops in the hall and turns. The young man in front of him wears thick-rimmed glasses, he’s slightly overweight and his face is dotted with acne. He takes a couple of deep breaths before talking nervously. He fidgets with his hands and his glasses as he speaks, stuttering and stumbling over his words.
“Sir, you asked me to let you know if there were any intrusions into Damocles.”
General Davies raises an eyebrow. “Were there?”
The young man hesitates. “W-well, sir, there… there may have been.”
The general frowns. “Follow me.”
The pair walk swiftly down the hall until they arrive at one of the lone offices with an opaque door and walls. The general opens the door and walks around to the other side of the desk. “Close the door and sit.” He motions at the young man, who dutifully obeys. “Now,” says the general, “what about Damocles?”
The young man pulls a few pieces of folded paper from his pocket and unfolds them. He clears his throat as he skims their contents before looking back at the general. “This morning at four we picked up an increase in attacks against our Washington facility. It wasn’t directed at the Damocles system, but it was in the same area, so I tagged it for further watch. Just before noon, though, the system started getting flooded by a denial of service attack.”
General Davies raised an eyebrow and stroked his chin. “Who was it from, and what attack were they trying to hide under the denial of service?
“I’m afraid I don’t know who yet, sir. But it was definitely a cover-up. The Damocles security systems triggered ten minutes after the denial of service started, going on high alert and activating the air gap safety systems.”
“So Damocles was brought offline?”
The young man shifts uncomfortably in his chair and shuffles the pages in his hand. “Damocles was brought offline, yes sir.”
The general sighs, closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”
“But… it took just over a minute for the systems to kick in after the intrusion was detected.”
General Davies opens his eyes in bewilderment. “Over a minute? What the hell happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. The entire red and blue teams are working on it, but I think at this point we have to assume that there was at least a partial breach.”
General Davies pulls open the bottom left drawer on the desk and takes out a bottle of Jack Daniels Blue Ribbon. He places two shot glasses on the desk, fills both to the brim and slides one across the desk. The young man watches, eyes wide, as the general swallows his shot and follows it by taking a long drink straight from the bottle.
The general closes his eyes, places the bottle down on the desk and leans back in his chair. “Are there any estimates on how much of Damocles could have leaked out in the breach?”
“We don’t have any data on how much was—I mean could have leaked out, sir.”
“Cut the crap and give it to me straight. Is sixty seconds long enough for a skilled team to get the essential bits of Damocles out of our systems?”
The young man hesitates and licks his lips nervously. “Nearly all of it, sir. If the attackers had any knowledge on the structure of Damocles they could have extracted the weaponized portions and left the command and control bits behind. That’s quite an assumption, though, General. For all we know, they could have—”
“That’s enough.” General Davies sits up in his chair, caps the bottle and puts it back into the desk drawer, leaving the full and empty shot glasses on the desk. He rises from his seat and heads to the door, motioning for the young man to follow him.
“What do you want us to do, sir?”
“Divert red and blue teams. Find out what the likely first targets would be and how we can protect them. It doesn’t matter who took Damocles anymore. If that much of it could have been extracted, we’re about to have bigger problems on our hands. I’m going to air gap the defense net and tell the President about this situation.”
The young man runs off and General Davies pauses in his office, glancing back to the telephone that sits on his desk. He mutters something under his breath as he closes his office door and heads back to slouch in his chair behind the desk.
“Once I decide on how to say it, that is.”
Chapter 5
Los Angeles, CA
“Hey man, are you alive? Are you okay?”
Rick awoke to the feeling of someone poking him in the shoulder. His eyes flew open and he scrambled upright, wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth and trying to back away from whoever was standing in front of him. A man and a wom
an, both dressed in singed and blackened business attire, stepped back a few feet at the sight of Rick’s wide-eyed expression and flailing limbs.
“Hey, man, take it easy!”
“Wh-who are you?” Rick stumbled over his words as he looked around. The sun had started to fade over the western horizon, casting an unearthly orange glow on the smoke that blanketed the city.
“I’m Jack, this is Samantha. Are you okay?” The man was wearing a suit without a tie, and a piece of his suit had been torn off and wrapped around his wrist. Despite his expensive clothing and shoes, his hair was a mess of dreadlocks and he spoke with the accent of a surfer. The woman standing next to him was wearing a pair of shoes that had the heels broken off, along with a pantsuit that had scorch marks around the edges. Her hair was up in a bun, and her makeup was smudged and stained by the black smoke in the air.
Rick looked down at himself, remembering how he had come to be slumped over on the overpass. He nodded slowly. “I think so. D-do you know what happened?”
The man put his hands on the back of his head and looked around, surveying the city. “You tell me, man. One minute we’re on the freeway heading back to the office and the next minute we slam into the car in front of us. The engine shut off and then we saw this bigass plane just slam into the building in front of us.”
Rick stood up and looked out to the east. The sky was still filled with smoke, but there were fewer fires, visible from buildings and cars on the street. “What time is it?” Rick turned back to the pair and the man shrugged.
“No idea, man. My watch kind of…” The man held up his wrist to show a crude bandage wrapped around his arm.
“It exploded.” Samantha jumped in, offering a look of sympathy to Jack.
“Yeah, man. I was trying to make a call through my watch, but I realized my phone was in the car still and it was out of range. I was heading back to the car when boom! The car just, like, went up in flames!”
Samantha nodded slowly. “There were a lot of people still in their cars when they caught on fire. We tried to help them out but hardly anybody made it out.”
“Then, like, twenty minutes later, or maybe longer, my hand just started burning under the watch. I pulled it off before it caught fire, but it hurt like hell.” Jack looked at his wrist, then back to Rick and shrugged. “It’s late, though, man. Like, getting dark late. It’s going to be rough going here soon without a flashlight.”
Rick nodded, then shook his head in confusion. “I’m sorry, but why are you up here, anyway? If you were down on the freeway, why would you come up here?”
Jack pointed down the length of the overpass. “This is the best way out of the city, man. Like, I don’t know if we can even get out, but the roads are a mess down there.”
“There are fires everywhere.” Samantha jumped in helpfully. “Plus, we heard on the radio that there’s been all sorts of looting going on. It’s getting insane out there. We figured we’d be better off up here, where there isn’t anything to loot to begin with.”
Rick spun back around to look at the pair. “A radio? A working radio?”
Jack nodded slowly. “Yeah, man, the city broadcast system. Bunch of speakers hooked up all over the place. It runs off some kind of emergency power, I think. Anyway there were some guys on there talking about how there’s looting and the best way out of the city is on the overpass. Oh, and some stuff about the military? I don’t know, man, we were busy trying to get away from all the burning cars and stuff.”
“Have you all seen any police? Or other emergency personnel?”
Samantha shook her head and shrugged. “We heard a few sirens, but that was a long time ago. I haven’t seen a single cop since we’ve been walking, and I’ve see a lot of people going by.”
As the fog from Rick’s mind continued to clear, he looked down the length of the overpass in front of him. The road that had earlier been filled with the burning hulks of cars was now home to people who were trudging along, slowly making their way in the same direction that Rick had been heading. He looked down at the ground where he had been sitting and noticed that his luggage was missing. “Did you see a piece of luggage here? A big black case?”
Samantha frowned. “Sorry, no. But there have been a lot of people going along here. One of them probably took it.”
“You did kind of look dead, man.” Jack shrugged sympathetically.
Rick sighed, more disappointed over losing the luggage than he would have expected to feel. “Well, thanks for stopping to check on me.” He stuck out his hand and Jack shook it enthusiastically. “I appreciate it.”
“Right on, man. Hey, if you want to walk with us, feel free. There’s a lot of walking to do, and hey, maybe we’ll find someone with a working phone!”
Rick looked around, still trying to get his bearings. His body felt weak, his head was still spinning and he was still trying to cope with what he had seen at the airport. “Yeah… yeah I think I’ll tag along. Thanks.”
As Rick, Jack and Samantha walked on, the pair started talking about their work at a technology startup and wondered what was going to happen the next day. Rick nodded politely as he listened, but his mind was elsewhere, wondering about his family and what was going on in Virginia. He hoped that whatever was happening—which he still couldn’t fully comprehend—was isolated to Los Angeles, but knew that was likely just a dream far removed from reality.
Chapter 6
Outside Ellisville, VA
As the gravel road turned into a paved one, Dianne began to see signs that the problems with her phones and the car catching fire were only small parts of something much larger. The first sign was the amount of foot traffic along the narrow two-lane road, which normally was devoid of all but the occasional car. Instead, however, there were dozens of people out who were walking, some wearing backpacks and dragging pieces of luggage behind them. There were even a pair of bikers going along that she had to pass, and though they rode what looked like racing bikes, they were bogged down with heavy packs on their backs.
“Mom? What’s with all the people?” Mark sat up in his seat as he looked around, a worried look on his face.
Dianne frowned and shook her head as she drove along, giving the cyclists and pedestrians a wide berth. “I don’t know, sweetie. Just hang tight and try to stay quiet until we get into town.”
The closer Dianne drove into town, the denser the foot traffic grew. She also began to see other cars on the road—just a few, but still a welcome sight—though they, like her truck, were all older models. As the two-lane road grew wider and a shoulder appeared on both sides that indicated she was close to town, she started seeing a more worrying sight.
“Mom are those—”
“Yeah, kiddo. Just like ours.” Dianne and the three children stared at the blackened husks of cars that started to appear along the road. A few still had flames flickering from the engine compartment and interior while most were simply smoking. Nearly every vehicle had at least one person standing nearby, their clothing blackened and covered with smoke and soot.
While the density of people was a welcome sight to Dianne, the sight of more burned out cars was worrisome, especially as more and more people began walking, jogging and running toward her truck as she continued on into town.
“Kids, make sure your doors are locked and your seatbelts are tight, okay?”
Dianne glanced around and looked at the doors, then looked at the back window of the cab to make sure it was closed. The people alongside the road, standing next to their vehicles, were beginning to swarm the truck, and Dianne increased her speed to get past them.
“Hey! Stop!” A man jumped out from behind a burned-out sports car and stood directly in the middle of the road, waving his arms in the air. Dianne gritted her teeth and slammed on the brakes, twisted the wheel and then hit the gas again. She heard the man cursing as the truck slid around him, and she glanced back to see him making an obscene gesture at her as she pulled away.
Unfortun
ately, however, the man wasn’t the last to try and stop Dianne’s truck. As the trees gave way to fields, houses and shops, people on both sides of the road shouted and pleaded with her to stop and let them in. Without having a clue as to what was going on, Dianne avoided people as best as she could, cutting through a small, sparsely-populated neighborhood on the edge of town as she tried to figure out what to do.
“Mom, what do all those people want?” Jacob piped up from the back seat as Dianne drove along slowly, her mind racing.
“I’m not sure, kiddo. I think they’re scared about whatever’s going on, though.”
“Can’t we help them?” Jacob sat up as far as he could, pressing his nose against the window.
“I wish we could, but we’ve just got the one truck. We can’t help everyone we see, at least not right now.”
“Where are we going, mom?” Mark asked.
“Good question.” A burned out car was parked in nearly every driveway Dianne drove past, and the fire had spread to more than a few yards and houses, as well. Smoke grew thicker the closer she drove towards the center of town, and she started to realize just how serious the situation was. “I think the best thing to do is to see if we can get a few supplies and then head back home.”
“What about dad? Is he okay?” Josie piped up from the back seat, and Dianne’s gut wrenched at the question.
“I’m sure he’s fine, sweetie. He’s probably still—oh my...” Dianne’s jaw dropped as she turned a corner in the neighborhood and saw what was ahead. Beyond the last few rows of houses sat the town square, the compact yet vibrant cornerstone of the city. The main street wrapped around a small park and gazebo in the center while the edges of the road were lined with shops both large and small. Beyond the center of town, just to the north, was the high school and accompanying stadium, from which a thick cloud of smoke was billowing into the air.