by Mark Wandrey
The blow came from what she perceived as below, and it rammed her into the ceiling opposite the hatch to her ship. The attack had come from their ship! The impact against the wall was like hitting the mats she remembered from gymnastics class. They weren’t hard floor, but also not particularly soft. It was a bit better than being slammed to a hard, grassy lawn. The air went out of her with a whoosh!
Alison saw stars and felt fingers far stronger than anything she’d ever felt claw at her neck. She was in a sprawling ball of hands, arms, and legs. In a flash, teeth were snapping at her face and Alison saw what was attacking her. The visage of Commander Richardson was one of pure horror. Her once comely face was screwed up in unthinking rage. Blood covered her entire lower face, smeared her hair, and stuck to her previously pristine uniform. As she snapped, Alison saw bits of human skin in her teeth. Someone screamed, high and shrill, and it went on and on.
“Push her back!” she heard Alex say.
“I can’t!” she cried, and when she screamed again she realized she’d been the one screaming all along.
“You can,” he said from somewhere. As Alison spun with Commander Richardson, she caught the briefest glimpse of Alex. He was framed in the hatch to Node 3, and he was holding something. “Do it!” he roared. Alison mustered all she had against the insane, clawing, cannibal ex-astronaut and pushed her back, maybe a foot. Her arms quivered with the strain.
“I…can’t…hold…her,” Alison groaned through clenched teeth. The two spun for another moment, and then there was a thunderous boom. The concussion of the blast hit her ears like a slap from a weightlifter. Commander Richardson was knocked back away from Alison, and she smashed against the wall, her eyes wide in surprise. Alison caught a handhold and pulled herself away.
Commander Richardson snarled, blood pumping from the bullet wound in her left shoulder. Alison turned and saw Alex, one arm wrapped around a handhold, the other holding a big semiautomatic handgun at full extension. Part of her wondered where he’d gotten it, just before the gun boomed again.
Alison put her hands over her ears and narrowed her eyes against the pain of the explosion in the enclosed space. Commander Richardson pushed away from the wall toward Alex just as he fired. The gun recoiled, the force traveling through his entire body and spinning him around the arm holding the wall. Alison watched the strange trajectory of the ejected casing bouncing off the walls and across the space. She looked back and Commander Richardson was halfway across the module.
“Damn it,” Alex spat and used his legs to correct his angle, “didn’t know it would be this hard!” The gun roared again, the round passing through Commander Richardson’s forearm, and like the previous one, on through the wall of the module.
The impact made the infected astronaut spin and miss her target. She collided with an instrument panel, facing away from Alex, five feet away. Alex recovered from his third shot, lined up the gun, and fired at point blank range. The bullet entered the back of the astronaut’s head and expanded, blowing the better part of her brains all over the panel she’d landed on. The cone of exploded brains, blood, and bone was like a tornado of meat.
Alison finished her slow-motion rearward movement and bumped up against the wall next to Alex, on the opposite side from the twitching ex-astronaut’s corpse.
“Quick, put this on,” Alex said. Alison couldn’t look away from the spreading storm of body parts. “Damn it,” she heard and was suddenly grabbed.
“What,” she said as a mask was slipped over her head. It covered her entire face and eyes. An instant later little spots of red began appearing on the clear plastic eyepieces.
“The blood is probably infectious,” he said, then looked intently. “Shit, we don’t have very long.” She followed his gaze and saw that the blood and other bio matter was moving in a pattern. A series of little vortexes were forming, drawing the blood and debris toward the station wall in three places. The spots where Alex’s bullets had punched holes through the thin walls. An alarm began to blare, and there was a disturbing moan from the station bulkhead.
“Into our ship!” Alex barked, and pushed her toward the hatch. Alison came partly back to her senses.
“Maybe we can close the hatches?” she asked as she caught the edge of the hatch into their ship.
“No time,” Alex said and pointed. Alison looked. At first it just looked like a section of wall. Then she saw the spot turning red from all the blood being sucked through a hole. Then she saw that the entire section was…bulging outward. Oh, fuck. “Go,” he urged, and she did.
She scrambled down through the hatch, followed an instant later by Alex awkwardly towing a three-foot-long oxygen cylinder. She moved as far into the tiny cabin as she could, making enough room for him to get inside. Once there, he pushed the cylinder out of his way and spun into a ball to grab the inside hatch. The station on the other side moaned like a wounded animal. The hissing of air loss was becoming a roar. Alex braced and pivoted the hatch closed with a thunk, cutting off the sound of the dying station. He pressed the locking button, and the electric motors dogged the hatch. A second later, there was a massive bang, and the ship shook violently.
“I think the ISS just exploded,” Alison said. They both moved forward to the windows. Outside they could see the curve of the earth. The sky was full of spinning chunks of the former International Space Station.
“Well that sucks,” Alex said. They watched the debris for a time. Several larger pieces spun into view, and their orientation began to slew. Alex deduced that the station was losing attitude control. “We better get out of here,” he said. They took a moment to carefully strip off their masks and stuff them into garbage bags. Next, they wiped down with a pair of alcohol swabs. They also needed to secure the oxygen tank and hook it into the ship’s life-support.
Once the tank was inline, the life support computer tasted the air from the tank and read the coupling, then reporting they had an additional eleven hours of air. Fifteen minutes after they’d dogged the hatch, they were ready to detach from the remainder of the station.
“Uncoupling,” Alex said and pressed the control. The black-and-yellow lines called barber poles didn’t change. “Uhm…” he said and pressed the button again, with the same results.
“What’s that mean?” Alison asked.
“It means, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”
* * *
135 miles west of San Francisco
The USCGC Boutwell was making almost 30 knots and trimmed for cruise. She was making one knot over her rated maximum, likely because she was also short quite a few crew. After releasing the ship they’d had under tow, and replenishing her fuel from a Navy oiler, she’d set out on the mission Admiral Tomlinson had given her. She had onboard a dozen naval specialists for the mission. It just so happened she was also doing what General Rose had tasked her with.
LTJG Grange, the commanding officer of the Boutwell and currently the highest-ranking Coast Guard sailor available, sighed as she looked at the charts from her command chair. From the time she’d signed on to the Coast Guard, she’d known that she would one day command her own ship. Her father had said he’d known it, too, when she’d been commissioned as an ensign. He was crying in his wheelchair at her graduation ceremony, IV hanging from a bracket feeding him nutrients. All he’d wanted was to live long enough to see her graduate. The cancer took him one week later. But she didn’t want the big chair like this, at the end of the world.
“On course, Captain,” the navigator confirmed from his station at the rear of the bridge. Grange nodded. “We should reach the Strait of Juan de Fuca in thirty-five hours.”
Grange looked at her maps, with hand-drawn navigational markings showing their projected stops for the admiral, and the two stops for the general. Six EPIRB, or Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, were between their position and Vancouver. She got constant updates from the radio shack. Frequencies were alive with calls. Death spasms, she thought of them. There were three
distinct categories.
The first were distress calls, and they were by far the most numerous. It was like a mosaic of pain, death, and destruction. Most were incoherent, while others were as detailed as a high-definition image. People trapped in buildings or ships. All of them were under attack, or trapped, or just panicking. Some were out of food or water and beyond panic.
The second were the only encouragement. Talk between people. Most of those were ships talking to each other. Many coordinating to reach the flotilla. Others were groups on the mainland holding out, reaching out to each other, surviving.
The final was the most disturbing. There were a few commercial broadcast channels still on the air, mostly radio but some television. A few were just loops playing repeatedly with news from days before order disintegrated. They found one live TV broadcast, from Eugene, Oregon. A news reporter was being shown over a bluescreen with the typical skyline shot of the city. It looked like a peaceful morning where thousands would be commuting to their jobs. The panic in his voice and the sounds of muted gunfire said otherwise.
“…our news helicopter confirms the Churchill High School refugee center is in flames,” the reporter was saying, her face wide-eyed, and her hair askew. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “There is still some limited ‘net traffic on local servers, though experts say they’re working to restore national service. Police Chief William DeCorsie stated via email that what appeared to be a massive demonstration was taking place around the Churchill High School center. Attempts to contact them have resulted in violent responses. Chief DeCorsie stated there was…loss of life.” She looked down at some handwritten notes before continuing.
“Psychologists and disease experts from the state government are struggling to find a way to deal with the so-called plague victims in a humane way. Many of them were being housed at the Peace Health Sacred Heart Medical center. There were conflicting reports that the center had a collapse of internal control and had to be sealed off. Police have been unable to regain control.” There was a sudden burst of gunfire and she looked aside in horror, just as the transmission cut off. The channel had remained off the air. Grange knew that a TV monitor in the radio shack had been tuned to the channel constantly, in the hopes that something would come back. Maybe they were still alive in Eugene, holding out. Maybe.
“Captain?” her radar operator said.
“Yes?”
“Ma’am, the first of the EPIRB should be within visual.” Grange got up and grabbed a pair of the powerful binoculars hanging on hooks by the bridge windows and focused them out ahead of the cutter. The sea was starting to be whipped into whitecaps as the wind increased and temperature dropped. She scanned for a moment until she saw a black smudge.
“Got it,” she said. “Change course three degrees to starboard.”
“Three degrees to starboard, aye,” the helmsman replied. They sailed in silence for a quarter of an hour until she raised the glasses and again looked. The outline of the container ship was visible now, as was the curl of smoke from its rear deck. The ship was foundering in the swells, visibly listing as it settled. Grange could see hundreds of containers had broken free and were spilling over the side. As she watched, one of the containers on the rear stack, near the bridge, exploded into a ball of fire which rose rapidly into the sky.
“Change course to the next EPIRB,” Grange ordered and put the glasses back on their peg. The cutter turned back to the north and their next stop. Several seconds later the sound of the explosion rolled over the cutter as it turned to its new course.
* * *
The Flotilla, 150 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA
Vice Admiral Lance Tomlinson put the headset aside on his desk and sighed. Ever since his Greyhound had set down on the Ronald Reagan, and he’d assumed command of the squadron, nothing had gone right. He’d managed over the last two days to establish a slight air of normalcy, just barely, and then he’d gotten a call.
It was interesting enough that he’d gotten a call in the first place, since all forms of communications were basically ruined. A kill switch, installed by the NSA in computers, land lines, and repeaters all over the country to protect against a cyber-terrorist attack, had been triggered by the emergency. Most of the command staff knew about it. War contingency. He knew the President would never use it. The man was a bit of a character, but not crazy. The call informed him that the President was dead, and they had a new President. She’d been the Secretary of State a few days ago, before the President succumbed to the plague in route to Andrews Air Force Base. Oh fuck.
The new President, Madam President, had hit the switch. She’d said it was to mitigate news of the plague outbreak. The result had been like throwing a five-gallon can of gas on a small kitchen grease fire. The house had just about burned to the ground. When the call came in, he found none other than that very same new President on the other end.
Since she’d gotten in contact with the admiral, he’d had several conversations with the POTUS. She was his Commander-in-Chief, and he had to follow her orders. The problem was, it appeared the end of the world wasn’t sitting well with Madam President. His aide, Commander Bascom, came in with a steaming cup of coffee. He saw the look on his boss’s face and shook his head.
“Hasn’t changed her opinion, has she?” he asked.
“Not in the least,” the admiral said and took the cup. Coffee used to be merely fuel, something to help squeeze a few more hours out of every day. Now with a finite supply, he was trying to cherish every cup. He sipped and grimaced. No matter how inferior the coffee might be. Bascom looked out the window to the construction team nearby. The sun was approaching the horizon, highlighting that nothing was happening. “She doesn’t seem to understand that a Boeing E4B is not a C-17! She just keeps insisting they’re similar in size, so it should be possible.”
“The E4B is a heavily modified 747,” Bascom said, shaking his head, “it doesn’t have a fraction of the takeoff and landing capabilities of the C-17.”
“Tell that to her,” the admiral said and pointed to the phone.
“So what’s your plan?”
“I don’t have one,” the admiral admitted, “but she does.” The commander waited patiently. “I had a conference with our senior Marine commander, Colonel Alinsky on the Essex, and General Rose on the Pacific Adventurer. We’re going to be mounting a joint operation.”
“I thought the Marines and Army were happy to just be left alone for now and protect as many civilians as possible.”
“The president wasn’t interested in entertaining that,” the admiral said with a snort. The Essex was just in view and they could both see a pair of huge Marine CH-53 Sea Stallions lifting off, then turning east. The commander watched them go, then realized what that meant.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me?” he asked.
“I wish I were,” Admiral Tomlinson said, sipping his coffee, “I dearly wish I were.” Up on the deck, more helicopters were being maneuvered around as flight operations slowly came back to life.
* * *
Near the International Space Station
The situation was quickly going from bad to much worse. Azanti and the ruptured module of the ISS it was still docked to were spinning on two axes. That was bad enough. Alex West, now head and only pilot of the ship, had managed to get a laser ranging of their altitude.
“We’re in a decaying orbit,” he confirmed.
“That’s bad?” Alison asked. He nodded. She looked outside again and felt her stomach lurch. “Are we spinning faster?”
“Yeah,” Alex confirmed, “the hunk of station we’re moored to must be venting. It’s acting like an RCS.” She looked at him in confusion. “Reaction Control System.”
“Oh,” she said and went back to the panel she had open. The control system was the one handling the docking mechanism. She’d worked on most systems installed on Azanti at one time or another. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them.
“Any luck w
ith that?” Alex asked after a time.
“No,” she said, giving up and closing the panel. “I think the locking mechanism is frozen.”
“Think?” She shrugged. “But you’re not sure…”
“No,” she admitted. “I didn’t work on this system. If we could go out and look at it…”
“No suits,” he reminded her. She looked out the window at the progressively faster spinning planet. “I estimate three hours before we hit the upper atmosphere.” He worked at the controls for a moment. These were the original controls the ship was built with, not the ones improvised to operate the alien-made drive module. “I’m going to see if I can stabilize this entire mess.”
“Is that smart?”
“No,” he admitted, “but it’s all I can think of.” He entered some commands. “Buckle in.” Her eyes got wide, and she grabbed her chair and pulled herself down into it. After days in the craft, she buckled the three-point harness with practiced ease.
“Go,” she said, and Alex entered a command. Something went thump, thump, thump.
“Thrusters firing,” he said, and there was an ominous groan from the hatch they’d come through. “Come on,” he hissed as the thrusters continued their staccato firing. Every time they fired, the hull groaned. “Jesus, that module must weight ten fucking tons!” It went on for a minute, then the console started beeping and he flipped a control. The firing stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“RCS gas is down to less than half,” he said and sighed. “We don’t have enough to fight whatever the out-gassing is doing.”
“So, what now?” Alison asked.
“Now,” he said, “now we get radical. The docking collar uses a rotating latch. The explosion must have torqued it. So we’re going to torque it back.”
“Is that smart?”