Overrun: Project Hideaway

  The second prisoner then gazed up at the clock.

  "After the initial time release of radiation, it takes about an hour for life to terminate," Allinson’s voice came again from the holovid. "Another hour from now the second prisoner's radiation caplet will be armed. After the first one is completely dead. We wanted this second one to spend time reflecting on how his actions brought him to this particular personal fate. We wanted him to die alone. His actions required a much more severe punishment. And we planned to use him as an example."

  "They're going to make him sit there in that," Barnes said softly.

  The prisoner put both hands up to his face. His body shook from the force of his cries as the holovid picture faded to black. Colonel Allinson’s image soon reappeared.

  "You are looking at the price paid, gentlemen, for failure. For tampering with the plan. There is too much at stake. It must be defended and allowed to run its course no matter the costs."

  Parker swallowed hard at the lump rising again in his throat. His terror was now replaced by something new. Rage. Raw fiery rage. Rage for ever allowing himself to become a part of what was just shown to him. And for ever allowing himself to be put in a position where he could not act.

  "Your orders are to stay hidden. At all costs. Await for instructions. Move to deep space if necessary. We will find you. No matter where you go. You will not be left to rot in space. You will be sought out. Trust in that. Wait until you are called upon."

  Parker reached up and absently rubbed at the spot that still stung at the back of his neck. Barnes watched him in horror. He grabbed for his puke tube and vomited violently.

  Parker unconsciously rubbed his fingers across the loaded Sunszk strapped to his calf. His finger grazed absently across its trigger.

  Barnes was too busy to notice.

  "You have been entrusted with a gravest of responsibilities. Mistakes made by either of you have the potential to cause the end of our kind. The end of human life. The future of the world has just been placed in the hands of two men. You two men.

  “And men make mistakes. Errors in judgment. We can’t assume otherwise.

  “You are restricted from leaving this technology or ever landing your ship. Your pilot controls have been programmed by the ship to respond only after receiving palm print verification. Unauthorized access to the controls will result in the destruction of the ship.

  “The radiation caplets have been programmed with a proximity sensor which encompasses a two hundred meter radius from the Beam Cannon Hardware. This is enough to cover the entire area of the Hideaway. And then a little beyond.

  “Exceeding this boundary will arm the caplets and release the radiation into your system,” Allinson’s eyes darkened as he spoke. “Causing you to die. And die horribly in punishment. That is most certain.”

  “Good god,” Parker said softly.

  “These prisoners left this world with the knowledge of their own fates. Your caplets have been programmed with a much slower time-release cycle. Should your mission orders be disobeyed, should you decide to bring the Hideaway back, you will all but have condemned what is left of the human race here to extinction. And Earth to its utmost destruction. The extended release cycle of the caplets will allow you extra time to ponder what you’ve done.”

  Barnes retched violently again into his puke tube. Parker did his best to ignore the smell.

  "You hold the future of the world in your hands, gentlemen. Hold it. Protect it. Hide it. There will be another contact. You can believe in that.

  “Good luck, men."

  And with that the holovid clicked off. Its blue screen faded to black.

  Neither Hideaway pilot moved, spoke or otherwise disturbed the silence of the cockpit.

  "Jeff, I double-checked the systems in the back,” Parker was the first to speak. “Looking at timestamps on the software updates, it is 2306. We just came out of a forty-two year hibernation."

  Barnes grabbed at the tube hanging at his side and again released the contents of his stomach in one large rush. Red and green substances ran the length of the plastic tube and disappeared in the floor.

  Parker turned away still trying to ignore the horrible stench floating through the small cabin.

  A tear rested in the corner of his eye. He blinked it away quickly before it could fall.

  Chapter 11

  "So what do you have left?"

  "Not much, sir," replied Captain Michael Samuel, leader of what was left of one of the Vulture squads dispatched to Beuford. "Each man is still armed with at least something. We have two holovids. Only one that actually works. A few explosives. And maybe enough food to feed what’s left of my squad till the end of the week, but only the squad.

  “We’ve already begun to ration the meals,” Samuel motioned with a nod to the twenty or so people that moved about in the dark.

  General Maxwell Tuttle moved his eyes slowly across the makeshift camp burrowed into the side of the decayed sandy countryside far from the road leading into Beuford. Dim light poked through broken rectangular shelters they had dug into a small hill.

  Tuttle and Samuel sat and talked alone atop a giant rock just at its edge.

  "Who are these people?" Tuttle asked already knowing the answer.

  There were nine women and ten or more children of different ages sitting near the corroding hill. Some were bleeding, and others were heavily bandaged. All moved silently about the campsite. Their voices murmured softly when a member of the Vulture team addressed them in the dark.

  "Things got real tight near Science Dome 15,” Samuel said standing and walking with Tuttle through the center of the camp. “The advance came through Beuford much quicker than expected. We were sent in to finish it up."

  They made their way towards the shelters many of which had flimsy curtains of plastic over the doorways to protect against the outside air. Small lanterns burned inside. When the curtains opened, they cast the only light through the camp.

  "Two of my men were rigging the base of a building when everything already set in the upper floors started going off. The explosions punched them through the surface of the street. We were able to fix on them with tracers and go in to get them out. And that's where we found them."

  "Your men?"

  "No. My men were dead. There wasn’t much left of ‘em. That wasn’t much of a surprise. What we didn’t expect were the tunnels. Lots and lots of tunnels. All the fuck over the place. And these people hiding in them. Through the years, through someone’s real concerted effort, they converted the sewers into a series of bomb shelters beneath the streets."

  Tuttle nodded knowingly.

  "We reported back and got the word to rig the sewers. We hauled everyone out we could. Pulled them above the street. And then blew it."

  Tuttle looked down at the ground and then over Samuel’s shoulder at the people settling down in the camp.

  "You took some liberty and interpretation with your orders, Captain."

  Despite the heavy burdens pressing around his heart like a fist, Tuttle was still a military quadrant commander. He had to act accordingly if at least to keep the minimum amount of people from dying in this war. And if that meant keeping his soldiers alive to maximize their protective effort, then he at least had to go through the motions of admonishing the officer before him for failure to fully obey mission instructions. No matter how much now it made his spirit sick.

  “I’m sure I don’t understand you, sir,” Samuel whispered looking at the ground.

  “Your timetable didn’t afford the time of a rescue effort,” Tuttle said coolly. “Occupying and arriving troops could have come upon you. Highly trained men, irreplaceable assets to this war effort, were unnecessarily put at risk.”

  Samuel looked up at him. The two stood across from each other at the center of the camp.

  The people surrounding them sat in the dark like spirits of the deceased moving silently about. It was almost as if they weren't even there at all. Their presence seem
ed to be just a grim reminder of what the men of the Vulture squads were actually all out there to do.

  Samuel knocked a square pack of plastic from a patch on his arm. He opened it, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He offered one to Tuttle who refused it with a wave of his hand.

  "Our orders were to light the sewers and make them unfit for use,” Samuel responded quietly. “Communication links were jammed up. We had a hard time getting anything through. If there was more instruction, we didn’t receive it.”

  “You know the objectives out here,” Tuttle said back to him.

  “I know the objectives,” Samuel answered silently. “And so do the men. What we did out here, we did as much as we were ordered to do.”

  “These people should have been dead.”

  “That order was never given.”

  “That order is always implied,” Tuttle’s duties as quadrant commander and his battle with his conscience was making his entire body numb. “It’s always implied and you know that.”

  “With all due respect, sir, that’s not what we’re out here to do.”

  “Captain, your position does not offer you the luxury to make that decision,” Tuttle answered looking past him into the dark. “Those decisions have already been made for you…for all of us.”

  “General…,” Samuel spoke softly. “Men are deserting all over from the Vulture squads. They do one or two towns and their consciences catch up. They start to think about what it is they are actually doing.”

  “Captain, your men are not here to think,” Tuttle answered back.

  “Maybe not, General. But they’re here doing what they’ve been asked. They’re blowing up the towns of our nation’s past. To hopefully ensure a better future for our country and their families. Families they will most likely never see again.

  “Intel isn’t what it should be to make this work. We don’t get into the cities much in advance of the troops. We’ve had lots of problems with premature detonations. We blow the charges while the troops are still in, even if our men are not yet out.

  “Most everyone here has pretty much accepted that it’s unlikely they will see the end of this war much less even make it to the next town.”

  Tuttle ran his eyes across what was left of this particular Vulture squad.

  Patches of singed hair covered the tops of their heads, and the fabric of their uniforms was either torn or badly burned. Many of the men hobbled on flesh-charred legs. And most of their faces were black from the soot of the scorched earth.

  "That kid is the reason a lot of people are still alive," Samuel said pointing towards one of the plastic curtains and the light coming from behind it in the side of the hill. "Everyone knew they were in there and what they were trying to do. When things started getting tight at the dome, our troops were sent into Beuford after them.”

  "To get them out?"

  "No," Samuel answered almost regretfully. "To make sure it was done.”

  Tuttle walked to the plastic that masked two small caves jutting into the hillside.

  "They stalled the J.G.U. advance long enough for them to get a lot of people out,” Samuel continued to talk while Tuttle was quiet next to him. “A lot of people at Science Dome 15 that is. Before they lit the wall. Before it was overrun. A lot of important people owe their lives to the chaos that kid and his father caused there."

  Tuttle looked out over the hill at the flames still burning inside Beuford and the ruined overrun dome in the countryside behind it.

  "These people," Tuttle said. "You endangered a top secret defense plan by bringing them out."

  "Like I said, General, that's not what we do,” Samuel said blowing smoke coolly through his nostrils and lips. “And I know you know what I'm talking about. Or else you never would have gone in yourself like you did. You wouldn’t have gone in to try and bring that man and his kid out. Like these people, they were to be dead too."

  “There were two of them,” Tuttle said so softly his words were almost lost within the thin breeze that blew through the night. “Kirken had two kids that were in there with them. I was only able to get one of them out.”

  “Like I said, sir,” Samuel said looking at him then. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  He sucked away the last bit of life from his cigarette and threw it on the ground. It briefly cast a tiny dull glow and finally went out.

  "Sir," another Vulture soldier approached them from behind.

  Both Tuttle and Samuel turned to him in the darkness.

  Only the young man’s eyes were visible through the surrounding night. Most of his skin was soiled or burned completely black. His eyes did not reflect any of the pain he surely felt from his injuries.

  "Sir," the soldier said again shaking a half-empty container in his hand. "We're working on the food. Dividing what we can."

  "Good," Samuel said levelly. "See how far you can spread it. And don't feel bad about making sure our guys get most of it. We're all dead if one of us screws up out of a lack of enough to eat."

  "Yes, sir," the soldier answered him.

  "We also collected some meds,” the soldier said again before turning away. “Everyone threw in some. From what we each had left. It’s not much, but it might be enough to help him out.”

  The soldier motioned with his eyes toward the covered tunnel at their side.

  Tuttle reached for the plastic covering and pulled it abruptly up. It made a slight crunching sound at being moved. Light from the cave's interior threw an eerie glow across the outside camp. Squinting their eyes, all three men peered inside.

  "Outer-dome medication is not going to help this guy," a very bloody man kneeling inside the cave answered the soldier before Samuel could respond.

  Two women knelt on his either side. They were both equally bathed in blood, blood that was obviously not their own. One held the hand of the still figure on the ground between them.

  "Didn't you say this kid lived outside anyway?"

  "Yes, I believe he did," Tuttle said swallowing hard at the sight in front of him and remembering what was going through his head when he had tried to carry Brandon Kirken out of the city. "At least for most of his life."

  "Well, judging from his skin deterioration and apparent hair loss, I'm going to say he did,” the medic treating Brandon Kirken reported. “The severity of his burns makes it hard to tell for sure."

  Captain Cornellius "Corn" Cranden, the only surviving medical officer on this Vulture team, turned to face the three men waiting outside the cave.

  One of Cranden’s own arms was severely burned, a patch of hair was missing from the side of his head, and a giant gash was visible beneath a tear in his uniform near his gut. The blood covering his body was partially that of his patient and partially his own.

  "And if he didn’t have it before, giving it to him now isn’t really going to do him a whole lot of good, Corporal,” Cranden spoke past Tuttle and Samuel towards the soldier. "That stuff feeds on your stored body energy to protect from the radiation. It would sap his strength in an instant, and he’d be gone soon after.”

  Cranden turned away from the men back towards his patient.

  “Ozone sickness and the effects of the outside are really the least of his troubles right now."

  The women behind him in the cave slowly adjusted and replaced sticky red bandages across the boy's chest. Kirken’s eyes were closed, and his breathing came slowly. The toe of one of his boots twitched up and down near the front of the cave.

  The woman holding his bloody hand cried quietly.

  "Hand that med back out, Corporal," the medic addressed the tattered young Vulture soldier again. “Make sure the squad keeps taking it.”

  "Yes, sir," the corporal said quietly and stole back into the night away from the hospital cave.

  For a few moments of silence, Cranden, Tuttle and Samuel watched him go.

  "What do ya got, Corn?" Samuel was the first to speak.

  "Well, this kid's got a punctured lung, and he's ble
eding way more than I can fucking stop. He's only been conscious for about five minutes since we brought him here. Both his legs are broken, and he's been going in and out of shock. He’s suffered quite a beating. Most likely way too much."

  Tuttle lowered his eyes to the ground.

  "Jesus Christ."

  "This is the kid that did Beuford, Corn," Samuel said sullenly. “He and his old man.”

  The only sound coming from the cave was that of the young woman weeping. Brandon's foot continued to twitch next to her. His body lurched as his throat and lungs struggled to make a cough. His eyes remained shut.

  “…and his sister…,” Tuttle said softly without taking his eyes from the ground.

  "I know that, Mike," Cranden answered first looking at Tuttle then back at Samuel. “Everybody does.”

  And with that, the medic reached towards the faces of the two men looking in and grabbed at the plastic curtain resting over the cave opening. With more soft crunching from the material, he pulled it down between them covering the cave's entrance and separating the world outside from what was going on within.

  "Do what you can, Corn," Samuel said into the cave through the plastic.

  He then turned and walked away.

  Tuttle stood there for a second feeling his eyes grow moist. He didn't follow Captain Samuel right away. He just stood there hoping for whatever he was feeling to pass.

  The failure. His guilt.

  He could still hear the voices inside the cave, the barked orders of the medic and the woman’s soft sobs. In the distance, he could still hear the rumble of explosions.

  Tuttle raised his head and followed after Samuel.

  As he walked, he prayed that the ghost of John Kirken was not a vengeful sort.

  Chapter 12

  "Sirs, I think I got it."

  Tuttle and Samuel both stood from where they rummaged through the remainder of the food supply packs.

  "Can they hear us or just see us?" Tuttle asked while he and Samuel walked to where the communications officer had set up the holovid gear.