“Sir, do you hear that?”
Fraser did.
The hum.
The noise.
“How are we able to hear it but not the helicopter?” Dorset asked. “No way it’s louder, right?”
Fraser didn’t answer that question—it wouldn’t do any good. “Just keep your headphones on. What’s our current distance?”
The pilot didn’t respond.
“Dorset?”
“Sorry, sir. We’re a quarter mile out.”
A quarter mile? That was good. The new headphones were good. It had been much worse earlier at this distance.
The hairs on his arms were standing again. His skin felt electric.
“Sir, my left ear is bleeding.”
“Did you remove your headphones?”
“No, sir. I just felt something wet on my neck.”
Fraser touched his own neck, and his hand came away dry. Nothing under his nose or his eyes, either. Dr. Chan said he’d built up a tolerance. “Are you compromised?”
“Compromised, sir?”
“Your ability to fly. Are you able to keep flying?”
“I’m…I’m fine, sir.”
“Take us in a little closer. Up near the front.”
At first, the helicopter remained steady, and Fraser thought he’d have to tell him again, but then they swooped down and over and narrowed their distance by about half.
The hum grew louder, but still felt tolerable. At least to Fraser.
“Dorset? You okay back there?”
“…I’m…okay.”
The helicopter jerked slightly, then steadied.
Fraser peered out the window again.
Dorset had brought them down, only a few hundred feet off the ground, even with the lead runners, an endless wall of people behind them.
He watched as a woman out front tripped and vanished under a thousand pairs of feet. There one second, gone the next. An old man was running next to a teenage girl, somehow keeping up as her legs pistoned, both of them staring forward toward some invisible brass ring, their arms dangling at their sides like dead weight.
All of these people were going to die. Every last one. His finger pulling the trigger.
Fraser felt pressure between his ears. As if someone placed their hands on either side of his head and pushed.
Bad.
Not as bad as earlier.
He could take it. He’d power through.
His right leg started to twitch, like a spasm. Involuntary.
He tried to shift his position but the belts held him tight.
The space felt so small, even surrounded by the Apache’s windows. He felt like he was in a box, the walls inching closer, pressing against him. Pressure, like his head, all around.
“Dorset, what’s our current distance from the bridges?”
When had Dorset started screaming?
“Dorset, what’s our current distance from the bridges?!” Fraser repeated, shouting, more firm this time.
Christ, this cockpit felt small. Warm, too.
He reached up and loosened the safety harness.
Both his legs were twitching. The muscles in his left leg tightened up, the start of a charley horse. There was no room to stretch. He’d kill to stand, stretch out, move around.
“Dorset, damnit! Answer my question!”
The man stopped screaming.
Thank God for that.
“Two…tenths of a mile…sir…ETA one minute.”
Fraser hadn’t heard the F-15s fly over them, but when he looked up, he saw their jet wash—these dark streaks on a darker sky. He saw the missiles deploy. Watched dozens of them cut through the air on bright blue flames, arch down, and ride the lasers to their targets.
He toggled the channel on his microphone. “Command, this is team leader. Bridges down.”
He wasn’t sure if they heard him—Dorset was screaming again.
Fraser looked down at his hands. His headphones were sitting in them, balanced on his lap.
He didn’t remember taking them off.
Funny—the noise didn’t sound so unpleasant anymore.
His legs were jumping now. He really needed to move.
“Take us down, Dorset.”
The ground came at them far too fast.
Chapter Ninety-Two
Martha
The names were still coming, faster now:
“Colton Matsuo, Leola Carpio, Valorie Wideman, Madaline Eaves, Manual Aldridge, Rigoberto Kogan, Danial Havens, Lajuana Bertolini, Hildegard Edman, Maire Fullwood, Marty Barb, Felicidad Zabriskie, Fabian Overman, Milagro Toole, Jona Dowler, Nicolas Theodore, Jude Manhart, Meredith Carroll, Arlene Lindstrom, Tia Gau…”
Sophie bounced from left foot to right foot and back again with each name, this rhythmic dance. There was no break in the words, not even to draw in a breath, as if speaking alone was enough to fuel her. Her face was this odd mix—the excitement of an eight-year-old girl discovering something for the first time, and something else, something far older, something that made Martha want to turn away.
The monitor with the frozen video image of the horde was attached to a metal stand on wheels. Tennant grabbed it and angrily shoved it at her sister. She pushed it so hard, it crashed against the metal cage.
“That’s our Momma and Poppa! Are you really going to let them die?!”
“Audria Kinne, die! Leland Pepe, die! Nevada Burchell, die!” the little girl chanted back at her, her legs moving so fast.
“No, Sophie! Nobody dies! Nobody!”
“They all run! They all run! We all run!”
The hum coming from Sophie’s body was loud enough now to rattle the cage. Martha watched a pen on a table jump several times and drop off the side. The hangar, the metal roof and walls, the large lights above, everything rattled and bounced. Martha felt it in her bones, in her teeth. The sound growing louder with it.
Her feet still moving, running in place, Sophie’s tiny hands reached out and grabbed the door, her fingers wrapped around the metal so tight they went white. “Tennnnant.”
Tennant hesitated a moment, then took a step closer.
One of the soldiers started to go to her, to hold her back, but Martha grabbed him by the arm and shook her head.
Let her, she mouthed.
“Luuuv you, Tennnnant.”
Tennant’s eyes filled with tears. Her fingers curled around her sister’s, squeezed her hand. “You need to stop this.”
“Caaan’t.”
“You can hear them, that means they can hear you. You need to tell them all to stop. They’re all going to die if you don’t. The soldiers are going to kill everybody. Tell Anna Shim, tell all of them. It’s not too late. You can save Momma and Poppa, all of them, you need to try…”
“…must run. All…”
Tennant looked over her shoulder at Martha. “She’s so hot.”
Martha reached for the iPad—Sophie’s temperature was 126 and climbing.
“Don’t let her burn up like the others!” Tennant pleaded. “I can’t lose her, too!”
Martha knew there was nothing she could do, but she ordered one of the soldiers to get some ice anyway.
Tennant turned back to her sister. “I’ve got nobody without you. Everybody’s gone.”
“Not goooone, running.”
“They’re gone, Sophie. Unless you stop this. Do you understand? They’re dead. The soldiers are going to drop bombs and kill everyone. They’ll be gone forever. They’re like the rabbits in my traps. That noise they’re making, that’s like that horrible sound the rabbits make when we snare them. These people, they’re all running into a trap.”
Martha considered telling her to stop, prevent Tennant from detailing the plan, but realized it didn’t matter at this point. The bridges were gone. They’d heard the report over one of the radios. All those people had no place to go, nowhere else to run. Surely, whatever force was behind this knew exactly what was happening.
“You stop them,
Sophie, you make them better, and we’ll all go back to the mountain. We’ll rebuild our village, you and me and Momma and Poppa…all of us. We can rebuild. Remember the storm two years ago? You were so small then, but that was the reason Poppa built the shelters, in case another storm came. Half the village vanished overnight, but we rebuilt. We put it all back, better than before. We’ll do it again.”
Sophie’s blue eyes scrunched, filled with frustration, and at first Martha thought what Tennant said had angered her, but then she realized this wasn’t anger, this was frustration.
Was Tennant getting through to her?
“Not enough,” Sophie forced out.
“What’s not enough?” Tennant asked.
Sophie’s legs started to move even faster. They were nearly a blur.
According to the iPad, her temperature was 134. She shouldn’t be conscious. She shouldn’t be alive. Her face and hair were greasy with sweat, and the hum, the noise, grew impossibly louder.
“What’s not enough?!” Tennant shouted.
“Us…Them.”
“I don’t understand!”
Sophie pulled out from under Tennant’s hand, took several steps back, then ran forward with incredible speed. She crashed into the metal door, backed up, and ran again.
“Sophie, stop!”
“Must run!”
“You’re going to hurt yourself!”
“Run!”
“Run to what?! What are you running toward?!”
“Not tooooward, run away. Must run away.”
Chapter Ninety-Three
Harbin
Harbin found the ointment—a metal tube of some brand he’d never heard of. The expiration date stamped in the base of the tube read January 1972.
The woman told him, “It’s still good. Most expiration dates are bogus. That’s something manufacturers came up with to build in obsolescence. Gotta throw stuff out, buy more. Throw stuff out, buy more…” She kept repeating this as she went back over to the long table below the television monitors. She began flicking each one on, moving from right to left. Five in total.
“Who are you?” Harbin asked her.
“My name is Dr. Amanda Cushman. Until very recently, I worked for DARPA. I haven’t officially tendered my resignation, but unofficially, I am no longer under their employ. We’ve had several differences of opinion lately, and I’ve decided it’s best we part ways.”
As she moved, Harbin noticed a dark stain on the crotch of her pants, partially dry. It had been there awhile. He tried not to stare.
Dr. Cushman tapped on one of the televisions, then put her ear to the small speaker in the front. “I believe you came to see Dr. Hoover.” She waved a hand toward a metal door with a narrow window on her left. “He’s in there.”
Harbin stepped up and peered inside. He had to cup his hands to see through the haze, and he realized the glass was smeared with blood and the room filled with a damp steam. There was blood on the filthy concrete walls, the floor, everywhere. When a gasp fell from his lips, it wasn’t brought on by all the blood but by the man inside.
Frederick Hoover was in a straitjacket, suspended from the ceiling, his legs pumping as he ran in place, moving so fast they were nothing but a blur. His skin was yellow, deeply jaundiced, his unblinking eyes red and glaring at some unseen point, spittle dripping from his mouth as he jerked in the air with the movement.
Still looking up at the television monitors, Dr. Cushman said, “I couldn’t take him running around in circles anymore, smacking the walls and the door, so I sedated him and got him in the air. I frankly didn’t think he’d last this long, but he’s holding in there. Last I checked, his temperature was around 120. He’ll blaze up soon enough. Those walls are a foot thick, solid concrete. We’ll be okay out here when he goes. Just keep that door shut.”
Harbin stood there for a long moment before he asked, “How did it happen?”
“Have you ever told a child not to do something? Don’t do this, don’t touch that…as soon as you tell them, that’s all they want to do, they become obsessed. That was Freddy when I told him not to listen. We took to sleeping in shifts a while back, and I’d wake up to find him listening to it…just little bits here and there, but he was convinced that if he listened in short spurts, he could build a tolerance. We’d seen it already in others. Immunity was a pipe dream but a tolerance? That brass ring wasn’t hanging too high, and he wanted to grab it. I told him to stop. That only made him want it more. He did it for months, and it seemed like it was working, until the day it didn’t. I’m not sure how long he listened that last time, but I woke when I heard the clatter of him running. Took half a day to get him into that room.”
“When was that?”
Her face scrunched up as she thought about it. “What’s today’s date?”
Harbin told her.
She seemed slightly taken aback. “I’ve…we’ve been down here a long time. You lose track. I guess he’s been running for about six days now. Like I said, he’ll blaze up soon. None of them seem to last much longer than that.”
Six days.
“What exactly is this place?”
She didn’t answer, only stared at the blank televisions. He was about to repeat the question when she said, “Blast from the past, isn’t it? The building you’re standing in, known affectionately as Renton Forty-Nine, is an old government bomb shelter left over from the Cold War. If you head down that hall in the back you’ll find food, water, showers, bunks…all the comforts of a third-world prison. This one was meant to house Seattle’s mayor, a couple senators, and anyone else stupid enough to seal themselves away in an oversize tin can for ten thousand years. How they expected to arrive in the ten minutes they’d probably have to get here is beyond me, but here it is. Our tax dollars built thousands of these, all over the country. DARPA picked this one up because of its unique structure—the building is a solid block of concrete with metal mesh layered inside. They did that for support, but the unintended consequence was they created a double-layered Faraday cage. No electronic signals in or out, unless they’re hardwired.”
“Like the dead room back at the base,” Harbin said.
“Yeah, like a dead room.”
Having finally warmed up, the five televisions began to glow—four with nothing but static, a shaky gray image on the middle one.
“How’s that signal coming in?” Harbin asked.
“Best I can tell, back in nineteen-whatever when they built this place, someone had hardlines put in from here to the local television stations up the road. I guess they figured they didn’t want to spend eternity without I Love Lucy on standby. I’ve only gotten a picture on this middle one, though.” Dr. Cushman stood and snapped a switch on a timer screwed into the wall. Plastic numbers began to whir, counting down from two hours. “We can watch for a little while, but make sure this is off before it hits zero. It’s possible to recover from exposure under two hours, not more than that. It creeps up on you but doesn’t seem to be cumulative. Don’t forget.”
She hit the screen with the back of her fist.
The horde came into view, this giant black mass writhing like some unholy living thing.
The picture flickered, and she hit the screen again. “That’s the Willamette River there holding them back,” she said, tracing the side of the screen. “Portland on the other side. Looks like the military blew the bridge. Probably all of them.”
The image flicked out and went to static like the others.
“Goddamnit.” She hit the television again, but the picture didn’t come back.
She hit it again, harder this time; still nothing but static. “We had communications with Washington up until a few days ago, but there’s something wrong with our radio.” She gestured toward a rusted-out metal box to the left of the couch.
The glass display was shattered. The cord attached to the receiver had been cut into at least half a dozen pieces, and it looked like someone took a sledgehammer to the rest, pulverizing t
he body and inner electronics.
There’s something wrong with our radio.
Dr. Cushman let out a sigh. “You came here looking for the illustrious Dr. Frederick Hoover, but I’m guessing you really want to talk about this.”
She flicked a switch, and the noise screamed out from every speaker in the bunker.
Chapter Ninety-Four
Fraser
Fraser tumbled out the shattered windows of the Apache cockpit and collapsed in the grass. Half a dozen feet away, one of four rotor blades protruded from the earth. He couldn’t tell by looking at it if it had just snapped off or if the other half was buried in the ground. The chopper was on its side, ass-end up in the air, one of the missile pylons under the wing propping it up. Black smoke poured out the back.
Fraser managed to turn his head and caught a glimpse of Dorset about a hundred feet away. His right arm was gone, nothing but a ragged stump at his shoulder, yet the man was running. Trying to. He was awkwardly shuffling toward the horde, blood pouring from the wound, down his side, his leg, his body slowing with each step. For a second there, Fraser thought he might make it, and if he did, maybe the momentum of all the others would carry him along like discarded trash in a rushing river.
But Dorset collapsed about fifty steps short. He went down face-first, dragging himself forward with his remaining arm, but only managed a few more feet.
Fraser forced his body to work through sheer will more than anything, because he was pretty sure it no longer wanted to move. Nothing seemed to be broken (a miracle, considering the drop they just took) but he was cut up, and every one of his muscles felt as if someone had stretched them out like taffy. He got to his feet, wobbled for a moment, and waited for the world to stop rocking.
His eyes locked on the horde.
Christ, there were so many, and they were so loud. Even above the noise he could hear the thunder of their feet. He was reminded of cattle in an old western, a stampede across an open prairie. The cowboys on horseback had been replaced by autonomous military vehicles running alongside. Cameras rolling, remote gun turrets shooting. He imagined a dozen soldiers in a building half a world away lined up in front of computer monitors, high-fiving each other with each kill in this real-life video game. He wondered if they even knew what they were really shooting at. He watched several of them roll by, picking off random runners as they went, and realized just how fruitless that effort was. They were swatting at single bees in a hive a million strong. This was nothing more than a useless effort ordered by someone who felt the need to do something and could think of nothing better.
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