Ground Zero

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Instead, he witnessed Bear Dooley and the other Bright Anvil engineers scrambling around, blindly trying to rescue their subsystems.

  “Somebody get that generator restarted!” Dooley roared. “We’ll lose all our data if it’s not up in half an hour.”

  Mulder shone the flashlight in a slow circle over the rest of the panicked bustle. He saw no apparent damage to the blockhouse itself. Scully stood beside him, holding on to his arm to keep them from being forced apart in the confusion.

  “But we just checked the generator,” one of the bedraggled sailors said. “It was working fine.”

  “Well it’s not working fine now, and we don’t have much time to fix it before Bright Anvil goes off. Get outside and check it out.”

  “Excuse me, Bear,” Victor Ogilvy said, his thin voice quavering with anxiety. “I don’t think it’s just the generator.”

  Mulder shone the flashlight over toward him, and the bespectacled engineer held up the phone. “This phone is on the backup source, and it had a full charge—but I can’t raise the Dallas. I can’t even get a whisper of static. It’s dead. Everything’s dead. All the control panels, all power, even our secondary systems.”

  Mulder pulled his satellite-uplink cellular phone from his pocket, wondering if he could possibly get anything on that system. But the phone was a silent lump of plastic against his ear; he should have at least heard a hiss or the beep of an improper connection.

  Dooley stood with his fists balled at his hips, suddenly overwhelmed. Mulder knew the big man had been just barely holding onto his composure.

  “But what could drown everything out like that?” Dooley asked. “What sort of accident did this typhoon cause?”

  “No accident,” Miriel Bremen said in a calm, strong voice. “Bear, you know what can cause those effects.”

  “The Dallas reported something huge on its radar,” Victor said. “With a high-energy signature.”

  Dooley swung his face toward Miriel, his expression open and lips trembling as uncertainty set in. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She looked squarely at him. The light from Mulder’s flashlight reflected in the sheen of perspiration on her face. “Electromagnetic pulse,” Miriel said.

  “An EMP? But how? That would require a—” He suddenly looked at the protester in horror. “An air burst—a nuclear air burst! What if somebody else is using this hurricane as cover for another test? My God, I can’t believe it. Somebody else detonated a device—that’s what Captain Ives picked up on his radar. Somebody else is stealing our show!”

  He spun around frantically, looking for something to grab, someone to tell. Victor Ogilvy cringed, as if afraid that Dooley would grasp him by the collar. “But who would do such a thing? The Russians? The Japanese? Who would have set off an air burst here? Here of all places. I can’t believe it!”

  “There may not be such a facile explanation,” Miriel Bremen said coldly. The heartless conviction in her voice sent a shudder down Mulder’s spine. Outside, the wind hissed past the cement-bag walls like water in a boiling cauldron. “It may not be something you can understand at all, Bear,” she whispered.

  “Don’t try to spook me,” Dooley shouted back at her. “I don’t have time for it right now.”

  With Scully still grasping his arm, Mulder thought again of the story Ryan Kamida had told. Mulder himself had cobbled together an unlikely explanation from the unfolding tale and the bits of evidence he and Scully had collected.

  “Hand me that flashlight, Agent Mulder,” Dooley de-manded. “I’ve got work to do. This is no time for a kaffeeklatsch,” Mulder quickly handed over the light.

  Behind him, Mulder heard the clank of a dead-bolt being thrown, the click of the latch raising. Then the heavy armored door to the blockhouse blasted inward and the storm exploded into the confined chamber. Papers spiraled into the air on a whirlwind.

  In the eerie light of the storm outside, Mulder saw a silhouetted form in the doorway, braced against the gale, pushing himself outside into the jaws of the typhoon.

  Ryan Kamida had let himself out.

  “It is time,” he shouted back at them. “They’re coming!” Then, as if drawn by an invisible chain, the blind man plunged away from the blockhouse into the ravening storm.

  “Ryan, no!” Miriel Bremen screamed.

  Kamida turned back toward her for just a moment before the winds and the darkness swallowed him up.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Enika Atoll

  Saturday, 4:55 A.M.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Bear Dooley squawked. “Get that damn door shut.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to get that guy back in here?” one of the sailors yelled.

  “You can’t just leave Kamida out in the hurricane!” Scully cried, looking helplessly around her. “He’ll be killed for certain.”

  The other team members appeared nervous, but Dooley only scowled. “He shouldn’t have run out there in the first place,” the big man answered petulantly. “We can’t send out search teams now to save an idiot from his own stupidity. Our power is out. The Bright Anvil countdown is still going—and we don’t get a second chance! Where are your priorities?”

  Mulder watched as two Navy engineers wrestled with the heavy door, pressing their shoulders to it and shoving against the battering ram of wind. Silence fell like a stone in the darkened control blockhouse.

  Miriel Bremen stared stricken at the doorway through which Kamida had just vanished. Mulder was surprised to see her standing rigid, holding on to one of the control racks for support. He thought she’d have argued to rescue her friend—but the protester said nothing, apparently resigned to his fate and terrified of her own. “It’s what he wanted,” she muttered.

  The light from a new flashlight made a weird bobbing glow inside the blockhouse. Technicians scrambled to restore their equipment, to get the backup generator jump-started.

  “How do we know the equipment out at the device is functioning?” Victor Ogilvy asked, blinking owlishly in the shadows and harsh light. “What if the countdown is frozen because of another dead battery? The EMP could have wiped out everything over there, too.”

  “We have no proof of any electromagnetic pulse,” Scully said.

  Dooley tugged at his hair in a comical gesture. “The device itself has a completely different power source, hardened against all accidents, rough weather—and even handling by Navy personnel,” he said. “Bright Anvil is one robust sucker.” He frowned at Victor. “If you don’t believe me, how would you like to take a hike over there and check it out?”

  “Uh, no thanks, Bear.” The young redhead quickly found something else to do. But from the queasy expression on Dooley’s face, Mulder knew that Victor had raised a question the bearded engineer would rather not have considered.

  Distraught, Bear Dooley rounded on Miriel, seeking a target for his frustration. He put his face close to hers and yelled so vociferously that in the flickering light from the bobbing flashlight beams Mulder could see spittle flying from his lips. She flinched, but did not back away from him.

  “This is your fault, Miriel,” he said. “You came to Enika of your own free will, and I welcomed you—but you performed some kind of sabotage, didn’t you? What did you do to the generators? How did you shut down all the power? You’ve been trying to stop this test since the very beginning.

  “I thought you were at least honorable enough to be here and witness it with me for old time’s sake—but now you’ve destroyed Bright Anvil, ruined everything. What did you do? Did you do something to Emil Gregory, too?”

  “I did nothing,” Miriel said. “Or maybe I didn’t do enough. But we’ll see. The Bright Anvil test will not take place—not this morning, not ever. It’s out of my hands.”

  “See? You admit it,” Dooley said, stabbing his finger at her. “What did you do? We have to get these diagnostics switched back on.”

  “Talk to Agent Mulder,” Miriel said, her mouth a grim line abov
e her long chin. “He’s figured it out.”

  Mulder was surprised to hear her—a former weapons physicist—actually agreeing with his bizarre explanation for the events.

  “So you’re saying he’s in it, too? He’s not smart enough.” Dooley’s face crumpled into an expression of disgust, and he stormed away from her. “I want nothing more to do with you, Miriel. That’s it. Emil would have been ashamed of you.”

  Miriel looked stung by the last comment, and her posture sagged, but still she held the edge of the control rack. “We’re all going to be obliterated,” she muttered. “The wave is coming, a flashfire, a wall of cleansing rage from the Enika ghosts. It’s already hit the Dallas, and it’ll be here next.”

  Mulder went to her side. “You knew about this? You knew it was going to happen?”

  She nodded. “Ryan told me it would…but I have to admit—” She gave a short bitter laugh. “A good part of me never actually accepted it. Ryan can be very charismatic, though, and so I went along just to see what I could do to fight with more practical means. But now it’s…it’s just the way he said it would be.”

  She drew a heaving breath. “At least Bright Anvil’s going to be stopped, one way or another. All the test material will be wiped out here, along with the project people. In the wake of this disaster, I doubt such a weapon will ever be developed again.”

  Miriel closed her eyes, and a strong tremor ran through her body like a seizure that quickly passed. “I suppose I always knew there would come a time when I’d have to test my convictions,” she said. “It’s easy to decide to volunteer and hand out leaflets or carry signs. It’s harder to say that you’re willing to get arrested during a protest: that’s a line some people aren’t willing to cross.” She glanced sharply at Scully, who looked away. “But there are other lines farther down the path, more difficult still—and I think I just crossed another one.”

  Her eyes wide, Scully looked at Mulder and then at Miriel. “I can’t believe what you’re saying. You honestly think a cloud of atomic ghosts is going to come and stomp on the Bright Anvil test because they won’t condone another nuclear explosion here?”

  Miriel just looked at her without answering, and Scully let out a long sigh of disbelief. She turned to Mulder in exasperation.

  “I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen, Scully,” he said, surprising her. “I believe it. We’re sitting ducks if we don’t get away from here.”

  The three fishermen from the Lucky Dragon stood up, looking extremely agitated. “We don’t want to stay here any longer,” their leader said, waving his hands in front of him as if trying to recapture a spare portion of courage that flitted just out of reach. “This place is a deathtrap. It is a target. We’re fools to stay here.”

  A second fisherman pleaded with Mulder, as if the FBI agent were in charge. “We want to take our chances, get back to our boat.”

  Scully said, “You can’t go out in a boat in the middle of a hurricane. It’s safer to stay here.”

  All three of the fishermen shook their heads vehemently. “No, it is not safer. This place is death.”

  Mulder said, “You told me yourself, Scully, that their boat’s been heavily reinforced, designed to withstand travel through a heavy storm.”

  Miriel Bremen nodded. “Yes, Ryan wanted to make sure we could make it out here. But I don’t know if he had any intention of going back. I don’t think he did.”

  Bear Dooley stormed around, still looking for something to break. “Go on out in the storm—all of you—see if I care. Get away from me. We’ve got work to do. There’s still a chance we can bring this test off. The device is on the other side of the island, and the countdown is going to proceed, whether or not we get these diagnostics up.”

  Mulder looked at Scully, and in his heart he felt an absolute certainty of what was going to happen—he realized it must be the same confidence that Miriel Bremen and some of the other protesters felt about their personal convictions. The fishermen went to the blockhouse door and worked the bolt to open it.

  Dooley stood ranting at them. “You’re all insane.” Mulder knew that Scully probably agreed with him.

  “Come on, Scully,” Mulder gestured as he ran to the door. “You’ve got to go with us.”

  “Mulder, no!” she shouted, looking torn.

  “Then at least help us rescue Mr. Kamida,” he said. Her expression changed to one of sudden uncertainty.

  The door finally blew open and the storm roared in—though the winds had already blown loose everything that it possibly could. Now, though, the voice of the whirlwind had a different quality, almost like human speech: wailing screams, whispering accusatory voices that lurked behind the gale, growing louder, coming closer.

  Mulder’s skin began to crawl, and he could see that Scully also felt the violent strangeness, though she probably wouldn’t admit it.

  With the fishermen beside him, Mulder stood at the threshold, nearly blown back by the storm’s force. He looked out at the awesome clouds that hung like sledgehammers ready to pound the island. He could see that, far beyond the brooding presence of the typhoon, something terrible…truly terrible, was coming their way.

  “By the pricking of my thumbs…” Mulder murmured.

  Scully still resisted, but Mulder finally dragged her close enough to the door so that she could look out. She protested again until she stared into the night and looked up at the sky.

  Then all her objections evaporated on her lips.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Enika Atoll

  Saturday, 4:54 A.M.

  The storm spoke to him in its power—dreadful voices against those others, welcoming whispers for him. At last.

  Ryan Kamida was part of them, a member of their spectral group, yet he was the misfit. Not because he was blind or scarred, but because he was alive.

  He staggered away from the control bunker, bumping into winds that punched him with the force of a catapult, driving him back—but still he ran. His feet slipped on the rough rock and sand that the gale flung up around him like shrapnel.

  Kamida stumbled, fell to his hands and knees, felt his numb fingers digging into the cold, wet beach. He wanted to let it suck him down, to draw him into the sand to become one with the ashes of his people, a part of the scarred atoll.

  “I’m here!” he shouted.

  The typhoon howled, and the voices of the ghosts grew louder, urging him on. He got up and ran again. A blast of rain-sodden wind with battering-ram strength snatched up his body, yanking his feet off the ground. He flailed his arms and legs in the air, floating like a ghost himself—but it was too soon. It was not completely finished yet.

  Kamida fought the chains of the hurricane until his lungs were about to burst. His heart wanted to stop beating from sheer exhaustion, but he plunged ahead, seeking release to join his family, his people—those unseen companions who had appeared to him for decades.

  Kamida called out to them wordlessly, trying to make his mouth form words in the tongue he had known as a child but had not spoken aloud in forty years. It didn’t matter how well he formed the language, because the spirits would understand him. They knew.

  They were coming.

  High up on the beach, Kamida tripped over the barrel left there by the fishermen. Instinctively, unerringly, he had found his way to the metal drum filled with the ashes of his tribe, those bits of charred flesh he had painstakingly separated from the coral and the sand of the atoll.

  He embraced the barrel, holding it tightly, pressing his cheek against the curved, rain-slick metal that felt cool even against his insensitive scarred skin. He held onto it as if it were an anchor, sobbing, as the hurricane roared around him.

  The eerie whispers and screams behind the wind grew louder and louder, drowning out even the storm in the congealing mass of clouds overhead. Ryan Kamida could feel the power growing in the accusing eye of the hurricane—a static electricity, a surge of energy.

  Kamida raised his face up to feel
the rain evaporating, the bright heat caressing his skin.

  Though he was blind, he somehow knew that in the clouds around the island a searing light was building to a white-hot intensity—growing brighter as the countdown for Bright Anvil continued to zero.

  FORTY

  Enika Atoll

  Saturday, 5:10 A.M.

  Facing into the storm, it was Mulder’s turn to keep hold of Scully’s arm, to be sure they wouldn’t lose each other. They staggered through the blinding rain and clawing winds that threatened to tear their small group apart.

  The three fishermen led the way, pushing forward one step at a time, heads down, making their way toward the sheltered lagoon. The high coral outcropping behind the beehive bunker absorbed the brunt of the violence from across the island. Still, the wind was so heavy that it pelted them mercilessly with stinging sand and rocks.

  Mulder could not see Ryan Kamida anywhere.

  “Mulder, this is crazy!” Scully shouted.

  “I know!” he said, but kept going.

  As they worked their way along, his own doubts asserted themselves: it was absurd and illogical to go out into such a storm. “Suicidal” was more likely the term Scully would have used—but given the situation, logical alternatives were in short supply, and she must have trusted Mulder enough to follow him. She could see with her own eyes the incomprehensible disaster about to strike. He hoped he wouldn’t let her down.

  Miriel Bremen plodded beside them, stunned, yet willing to escape—not so ready after all to die for her cause that she would give up this last chance to get away.

  “No matter what else you believe, Mulder,” Scully had to yell in his ear just to be heard, “the Bright Anvil device is going to go off in a few minutes! If we don’t get far enough away, we’ll be caught in that shockwave.”

  “I know, Scully—I know!” But his words were whisked away by the storm, and he didn’t think she heard him. He turned to look at the craggy outline of the black uplift behind the blockhouse. The Bright Anvil device was out of sight in its shallow cove on the far side of the island.