Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile

by J. L. Bourne

  Immediately, the radio light flashed inside the vehicle, indicating a valid signal. Putting the headset on I could hear a voice speak clearly and concisely, warning repeatedly that there were A-10 Thunderbolts rolling in on our position from Scholes International in Galveston. The “Hawgs” were targeting the barrage beacon with 30mm cannons and they were asking all friendlies to rally east of the target so as to minimize fratricide.

  Time to on top: twenty-one minutes.

  After the Hawg controller finished transmitting, I could hear a faint signal and a voice identifying itself as the carrier air boss. He was ordering a division of F-18s to drop dumb iron bomb payloads on our position to complement the more precise optically aimed Warthog 30mm cannon strikes. With the jamming signal apparently destroyed along with the Reaper UCAV, I transmitted back to John and the others on a discreet channel what I had heard and that we were going to rally east a few hundred yards. The command center tuned in to the action on the radio as we started the engines and rolled east. We sat on a knoll overlooking the compound. There were dozens of undead already drawn to the beacon from the front of the compound area near the large steel double doors.

  From our vantage point we saw iron hell rain down all around the compound via a division of F-18s dropping iron bombs onto pockets of undead. One F-18 used its airframe as an offensive weapon by going supersonic a foot over groups of undead to rip them apart or disable them with concussion. Explosive forces violently shook our vehicles as John reported in via radio below that the lights were flashing underground. After ten minutes of bombardment I overheard the codeword “winchester” on the radio, signifying that the fighters were out of ordnance and returning to mother. The sonic beacon had survived the bombing runs with no damage. The cursed device continued to transmit our position for all the dead to hear for miles around. Of course, the fighter supersonics didn’t help our cause much either.

  The LAVs remained in formation east of the beacon as the first of the Hawgs rolled in hot, conducting a first pass before slamming the beacon with a mix of tungsten and depleted uranium 30mm rounds. Gaping up at the A-10s I could not help but wonder how they could fly so slowly.

  The vulcan cannons began to grunt loudly, causing something that I had not expected . . .

  The Hawgs cut through the sonic beacon javelin device as if it was paper. It was utterly disintegrated into shards, except for a few feet of alloy nub sticking out of the ground. The immediate silence shocked my system more than the overhead air strikes. I flung open the hatch, yanked the brass out of my ears and watched the rest of the strike from the top of the LAV. I could see Saien doing the same thing a few dozen meters to my right. He had his rifle sitting on the turret and I could see him scanning to the distance in the direction of what was quickly becoming a vast dust storm on the horizon.

  Getting back down inside the LAV, I turned the vehicle optics to my face and looked out to the horizon. The dust plumes looked identical to the cloud surrounding the horde that Saien and I had encountered previously. There would be no stopping them. Not with a thousand A-10s loaded for bear. I immediately radioed down to John and the rest to prepare for evacuation from the facility immediately.

  There were hundreds who needed evac. The carrier was steaming at full speed to rendezvous the coast to conserve helicopter fuel. Only the women and children and those who were injured would evacuate via simultaneous multihelicopter trips from the facility to the ship. The Hawgs were given instruction to intercept the horde just a few miles away and swarm around above them in an attempt to stall or draw the undead in another direction. We do not know if this tactic will work, as there are only three aircraft with enough fuel to attempt the distraction operation. Over the radio, I heard one of the A-10 pilots say that he had to switch to manual reversion for his flight controls and that his hydraulics system had experienced a catastrophic failure. He declared an emergency and a few seconds later I saw him buzz over our heads, scramming back to base. I hope he makes it.

  I’m sitting on back of a deuce and a half waiting on the remaining carrier helicopters to pick up the rest of the high-value assets before we roll. The current plan is to convoy southeast to the Gulf of Mexico and then rendezvous the USS George Washington via small boat. We have multiple hard cases full of intelligence to be analyzed onboard the carrier. John backed up the entire H23 mainframe before we welded the doors shut, turned off the lights and bugged out. The intelligence was marked for immediate review and dispatched with the first available outgoing helicopter.

  CVN

  23 Nov

  0800: USS George Washington

  The carrier is in poor shape. There is red rust everywhere, much more than the expected haze gray of a well-maintained warship. There is no safe way to perform material condition maintenance, as every dry dock port will most likely be overrun with the creatures. The convoy operation to the carrier did not come without a hefty price. We lost dozens of good men. We were being attacked on all fronts as we cleared countless old roadblocks and wrecks. Most casualties occurred as a result of waiting for the small boat that would take us to the ship. With the carrier’s large size, she could not berth near the shore. She had to anchor out a distance and send smaller craft to extract us at a rate of two boats per trip.

  The operation was delayed an hour due to choppy seas. We were forced to defend ourselves against hundreds of undead with our backs to the Gulf. Many retreated by jumping into the water, choosing the cold waters over being eaten. We set up chain-linked islands of LAVs floating offshore, providing crew-served weapon support from the water’s haven. We did what we could until the boats arrived. The dead we were fighting up to this point were likely the leading edge of Swarm T-5.1. The information previously transmitted by Remote Six suggests that they have somehow tagged the known swarms in the United States and seem to be attempting to designate and track them from a distance. A rotating sortie of Hawgs did what they could to draw a line in the sand by cutting the horde down by about 0.001 percent at a time. In the end it might have saved our lives by buying us those extra few seconds we needed to board the boats. The pilots reported an undead stream for miles and miles.

  We kept fighting, expending all small-arms and crew-served ammunition. We could hear the powerful sound of the small-boat diesel engines behind us as the undead broke our fifty-yard perimeter kill barrier. Just as they were overtaking our position and reaching our front-line defenders, the boats arrived. We quickly boarded. Some had to fight the undead hand to hand with bayonets and empty weapons to board. I tossed my Randall knife to one of the Marines just in time for him to unsheath it and brutally decapitate two nearly skeletal and naked creatures clawing for his flesh. He yelled a hearty thanks, wiped the blade off on his pants and gave it back as he boarded the boat.

  We were safely moving in the water toward the carrier, stopping only briefly every few hundred yards to pick men out of the water who were still alive but going into shock. Some had already turned and reached for our rescue personnel as they attempted to save those that they could.

  The day we arrived a mixture of military surgeons and volunteer AmeriCorps doctors that were onboard immediately checked us out. Although they were not military, they were happy to be here instead of on the mainland. As they patched us up they told us that the life expectancy in some areas of the mainland was one hour at most. Another sailor onboard told me that they had to make dangerous incursions hundreds of miles inland to places like Redstone and Pine Bluff arsenals to replenish ordnance and critical repair parts from time to time.

  Tara and I were berthed in a stateroom together on the O3 level. I was more than happy to see her and find out she had made it onboard without problems. She gave me the stateroom numbers as well as deck and frame numbers of all former Hotel 23 residents, and I made a mental note to visit everyone I could when I had the time. When I was not writing an operational intelligence report on the past year’s goings-on I spent all my time with her. She has seemed much more emotional lately.
This is completely normal, considering the stress everyone has been through.

  I truly missed her during my absence, and I finally had some time where we both felt safe enough to let our mental guard down a bit and have real conversations about what happened to me out there.

  I’ll never forget her words: “I can’t believe you are here in front of me. I missed you so much. You were bringing back what they took away from me.”

  As we were moving deeper into conversation a messenger knocked on our door and asked me to follow.

  My debriefing in the Aircraft Carrier Intelligence Center (CVIC) took an entire day and a half. I was going over documents with John and Saien when the ship’s acting intelligence officer appeared on deck. He introduced himself as Joe from the Central Intelligence Agency. He wore one of those olive-drab “shoot me first” photographer’s vests, gray T-shirt and cargo pants with desert combat boots. Using my journal, I pored over the details I thought would be of significance. I was told that the acting Chief of Naval Operations would be summoning me to his office soon, as he wanted to meet me and get firsthand ground truth about the situation on the mainland and speak about an upcoming mission that may need my consultation.

  Joe quickly redirected me to anything and everything regarding Remote Six. I explained to him the nature of the technology I had seen—everything from the weapon laser designator that I still had to the button beacon and even the UAV C-130. When explaining the fiber-optic boxes connected to the avionics of the C-130 I was compelled to tell Joe that I felt the unusual technology was years ahead of the mainstream technologies that were commercially available at the time the dead started to rise. He took careful notes and asked precision-guided questions regarding the technology. It seemed he was much more interested in the communications and the technology coming out of Remote Six than in the undead situation on the ground.

  Another subject of interest was the condition in which we had left Hotel 23. I explained that every piece of valuable intelligence was exfiltrated with the evacuation and that we had welded all access doors closed to prevent tampering by anyone or anything. Over his shoulder he ordered one of the intelligence personnel to ensure that the CVIC “keeps an eye” on Hotel 23 in the event that an attempt is made on the systems inside. He stated that it was worth diverting assets for at least a while.

  I told him of a list of compounds that John had gained access to via the computer systems inside Hotel 23. I said that there were at least a dozen locations, and that the only location in the database I had recognized was Groom Lake, Nevada. I asked Joe if there was any significance to that location and why it would still be manned and in the green. He said that he did not know, but it seemed to me that he was being deceptive. While telling him about Project Hurricane technology, I had witnessed that he was interrupted by a phone call.

  After nodding a few times and saying, “Yes, sir,” he hung up the phone and said simply: “You’re on.”

  I dropped off the debriefing report that I had invested the last two days writing and followed Joe to the admiral’s in-port cabin. After I had stubbed my toes on three knee knockers and nearly hit my head on a leaking low-pressure steam pipe, we eventually arrived. There were two Marine guards standing in front of the cabin door and they stepped aside after seeing Joe. We knocked once and a gruff voice responded with only, “Come.” On entering the cabin I saw the admiral sitting at his mahogany desk with a bottle of Chivas scotch and three glasses. I walked toward the admiral and stood at attention eighteen inches in front of his desk. I didn’t recognize him. I introduced myself to the admiral and stated that I was reporting as ordered.

  He laughed and said, “Sit down, son, I was only a senior full-bird captain a year ago. The stars were, how should I say—battlefield promotions?”

  I sat down and he poured three glasses and handed two of them to Joe and me. He introduced himself as Admiral Goettleman.

  He proceeded to offer his account of the past year—tales of his flotilla of small-boy ships and the littoral war against the dead that kicked off in the early weeks. After some major cities were destroyed by tactical nukes, his ships were charged with clearing operations. They would draw the dead to the coastline near major population centers and prosecute via full barrage for hours at a time in an attempt to thin the herd. There were times his destroyers and cruisers would sit at anchor for days with the ships’ horns blaring intermittently to attract the dead in order to ensure high effect. He had personally witnessed .50 cal gunners throw red-hot barrels over the side into the water only to replace them with new cosmoline-coated surplus steel scavenged from various military arsenals around the United States He then looked solemnly into the distance—not at me but through me.

  “Intelligence estimates credited my group with less than a one percent disposal rate. We got half a million at least. I know this ’cause we expended well over a million rounds. It turns out, the littoral war was of no more value than the nuclear campaign.”

  He then asked about my story.

  After I had presented an executive-level debrief on my experiences of the last year, he took a long pause and then took a long drink of scotch and filled his glass back up three fingers. He went on to stroke my ego by saying that there are not a lot of men who could have saved so many people and survived that long on the mainland. He then stood up, walked over to the liquor cabinet and pulled it from the wall on one side. Behind the cabinet a safe was hidden. After spinning the dials back and forth he pulled out a thick file and placed it on his desk. As he unwound the string binding the folder, he informed me that he had a special team that he had put together for a very important, nationally sanctioned operation.

  “The USS Virginia, a nuclear fast attack submarine, is currently en route to the Pacific side of the Panama Canal from the waters of Baja. Of course the Canal is derelict and nonfunctioning, but it is still the thinnest land mass between this ship and the USS Virginia on the Pacific side. I’ll cut to the chase: We are sending an incursion team to China. Reliable intelligence suggests that the source of the anomaly resides in a defense research laboratory on the outskirts of Beijing. Our scientists think we may have a chance of finding a cure or at least a vaccine if we can locate and extract patient-zero or the research data associated.

  “You and the civilians under your leadership survived for nearly a year on the mainland. The DEVGRU frogs and D-boys on this team I’m putting together can’t boast that kind of experience statistic and probably wouldn’t want to. China is, unfortunately, many times denser in undead population than the United States, and over two-thirds of their undead population is walking on the eastern coast. In saying that, it is prudent to mention that they didn’t deploy nearly as many nuclear weapons inside China to neutralize the dead. Luckily, Beijing was not destroyed. Taiwan was not so lucky. It was completely wiped out by the chicoms and will remain hot for years to come.

  “The plan is to move the carrier to the thinnest point of the Atlantic side of the canal and fly the incursion team over the Panama land mass into the waitin’ open hatches of the USS Virginia. She’s relatively new and in much better shape than this ship. She has fifteen years or more until scheduled refueling of her reactors and currently has ’nuf food onboard for a six-month run.”

  I was starting to realize at this point what the admiral was leading up to.

  “We intend to have the Virginia in the Bohai in three weeks. We’ve located airstrips with probably serviceable Chinese military helicopters at three different airfields near Beijing. Since the Virginia has no tactical requirement to run below periscope depth we can remain in constant data contact with her as she transits from CONUS to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to the Bohai. After arriving in the Bohai, the Virginia will make her way upriver to Beijing and to the airfields we’ve identified. After arriving in the vicinity of the airfields, Virginia’s crew will launch Scan Eagle UAVs to recon the airfields and determine the best candidates for rotary-wing repairs and deployment.

  “I’d lik
e you to ride the Virginia to China as a technical consultant for the incursion team.”

  After letting the admiral’s request (see: order) sink in for about ten seconds, I mentioned to him the obvious fact that I was no special operator. I am a naval officer and not a door-kicker or commando. I had no experience in this type of operation.

  He replied callously with only: “I have been briefed in your background and I have decided that you will ride the Virginia to China and you will support this operation. I know about what you did in Texas. We screened all military message traffic leading up to the anomaly. Your name came up as, shall I say . . . missing?”

  A line of seriousness appeared on the admiral’s forehead and then he said: “Can’t say that I blame you, son. There was no way to win at that time, but there may be a way to win now. There’s space on the helicopter as well as the boat for an extra body, if you want to bring someone you know and trust. I’ll leave that to you. You leave in three days’ time. That is all, Commander.”

  All I could mutter was, “Aye, aye, Admiral.”

  . . . Then dismiss myself and walk out.

  Leaving the cabin in a confused daze, I didn’t realize until Joe congratulated me on my new promotion that I had been bumped up two ranks to commander. He also handed me the appropriate collar rank devices and wished me better luck than the man who had held these oak leaves before me. I tossed them in my pocket, never planning to wear them, and made way to my quarters.

  BT

  TS//SI//SAP HORIZON