“Shit,” was the only word that seemed appropriate and so she said it.
After grudgingly accepting that there was no simple way to track her position, velocity, altitude, or trajectory, Ming looked around. A dome of bright to dim pinpricks of light shined above. Trails of smoke of various thicknesses blotted some of the distant stars. Though she never really developed an overwhelming appreciation for poetry, Ming found herself trying to recall a poem she'd written as a teenager. But even as the free fall continued and she spoke aloud, her mind was formulating and running through a list of options. “Icarus dared to fly and someday so will I embrace the endless sky. His father warned him not to venture too high lest he surely die. Hubris brought him low but I will… hmmmm, aw crap what am I doing?” Ming berated herself, shook her head, and tried to focus. “Poetry? What the hell am I doing? Think Ming... think.”
The increasingly turbulent wind made moving her body difficult. There was a long-shot option though it was untested and would put a sizable increased drain on her EVA suit's battery system. Her hands felt heavy and clumsy as she tried to activate the helmet's minicomputer. If it worked there was a slim chance an experimental program created and uploaded by Louis and some of the engineers on earth could help.
The faceplate edges glowed and the typical readings appeared: Air supply, battery charge, suit integrity, and communications were in their respective locations. Everything appeared good. She spoke clearly. “Activate Road Warrior GPS.”
A flickering box materialized in the center of the faceplate. Inside it the word: LOADING appeared. When the word faded a moment later a computerized voice, that spoke a bit quickly said, “Ready.”
Ming saw herself plummeting toward what looked like a huge dark blanket of cotton and realized she was soon going to enter a cloud bank. She repeatedly yelled, “Shit!” while thinking, There's no way! I can't be only two miles from the ground already. Clouds don't usually form over two miles up. I can't be that low.
Numerical coordinates appeared in the GPS program box. The numbers changed so rapidly that Ming couldn't wrap her mind around what they meant. She knew the coordinates where she wanted to make landfall by heart- LATITUDE: 42.840393 LONGITUDE: -104.665762. But the GPS screen's numbers were way off on the longitude.
Ming did some quick calculations and realized as the clouds swallowed her there was no time to do anything but yank the parachute release and hope for the best. She had a couple of moment’s difficulty grabbing a hold of and yanking the ripcord. The banner rushed out of the backpack and almost immediately she felt a series of simultaneous sharp painful jolts as the cords snapped tight. Looking up she could make out nothing. Ming flicked on the exterior helmet spot lights and could see a few cords fading in and out of view beyond her water speckled faceplate.
“Display my altitude.” Ming said while struggling not to panic. The GPS program calmly asked, “Metric or imperial?” Ming silently cursed, gritted her teeth, and said, “Imperial.” The program box on her faceplate now showed the Longitude, Latitude, and, Altitude. The first two numbers were changing much slower but the last one was decreasing.
She noted as it changed from 9,000 and checked the digital clock. When the number 8,000 appeared she realized 80 seconds had elapsed. Most people parachute down at a thousand feet per minute, so I'm not dropping too fast. That's good, right? She thought hopefully.
The Latitude numbers looked relatively correct but all that meant was she hadn't gone too far north or south. As she glanced between the dropping altitude and Longitude Ming was having a difficult time mentally calculating how far she'd overshot. If it were a few miles, maybe several dozen, perhaps a hundred at most, she was certain everything would be okay.
She was having a hard time focusing on how far east she'd already overshot mostly because her attention was on the time and her altitude. If her math was correct there wouldn't be any danger of hitting the ground too hard or fast.
Because Ming was a mission specialist aboard the station, and her expected stay was to have only been a few months, she'd gone through an abbreviated training course which hadn't included parachuting. In spite of being off course and about to touch down on a planet where the undead outnumbered the living by an astoundingly high number, Ming wasn't anywhere as worried or scared as she'd been aboard the station. It wasn't precisely euphoria that Ming was feeling, just a very calm and peaceful sense that somehow everything would be alright.
The improvised parachute caused a wide, slow, swinging sensation that felt as if she were being rocked to sleep. Ming snorted groggily and wished there were some way she could pinch herself. Time itself seemed to slow down as she struggled to focus on the altitude but the decreasing numbers only caused her to feel even more sleepy and lethargic.
She desperately didn't want to pass out. Wherever her landing might be she knew being asleep would only lead to a greater chance of some undead monstrosity wandering over to take a bite.
Of course the ghouls are only a part of the equation. There are probably still enough crazy people down there who might make being eaten seem preferable. Why are humans so stupid? She thought and fought off sleep by considering her life.
At the age of fourteen she graduated from the prestigious Lakeshore Academy in Massachusetts. The school's student body consisted only of hand-picked, highly gifted, intellectual children from around the world. After Lakeshore she was offered a tempting variety of scholarships by universities from nearly every corner of the planet. In part, because both her parents taught and worked in research that crossed multiple fields of science Ming eventually chose to study where they worked the Massachusetts Institute of Advanced Theoretical Technology. At the age of nineteen Ming had earned multiple Masters Degrees in advance theoretical physics, astronomy, computer, with a double entry in engineering.
Both of her parents were surprised and tried to talk Ming out of accepting an offer that came from a large corporation that worked to design and build the next generation of aviation technologies. Ming ignored her parent’s objections because she knew the corporation provided a multitude of devices for NASA and other space programs. Within three years she was the chief of her own department codenamed Icarus Incarnate. Her team of researchers and technicians pioneered new processes to quadruple the effectiveness, range, and classification of deep space radiation. Three years prior to its projected arrival upon earth it was Icarus Incarnate that discovered, pinpointed, and successfully tracked the course of the interstellar phenomenon. Some of her team christened the approaching oddity as Ming's Massive Mystery Miasma, which was later shortened to 4M.
The approaching phenomena was projected to enter the solar system and reach Earth with two years. Federal grants were lavished on her department totaling several billions of dollars over the next eighteen months. Icarus Incarnate took the lead role in developing a plethora of newer more powerful computer simulations, scanners, and many classified types of equipment to study the approaching interstellar event. Much of the new equipment was sent to the ISS to gather as much information as possible regarding 4M.
There were problems troubleshooting the equipment once it was installed.
Ming never dared hope her childhood dream of going into space could come true but it did. No one knew her systems better and she got her wish to boldly go where very few had gone before. Within a week of arriving aboard the ISS as a mission specialist Ming had nearly all the new equipment and computer systems properly adjusted and soon massive amounts of data was being gathered and analyzed by scientists around the earth.
Six months before 4M was estimated to reach Earth she managed to plot the event's dimensions. While there was no way to accurately measure its length, the approaching event was estimated to be massive enough to eventually fill the entire solar system. In spite of immensity few researchers found much reason to be alarmed by the event. According to data gathered by the detectors, scanners, radiation sensors, and computer simulations there seemed nothing to fear.
&nbs
p; Throughout the event an assortment of radiation types, most of which were well known, were detected in varying intensities. Because the radiations were so spread out and diffused it was believed there would be nearly zero health threat.
Ming Yeow was cautiously hopeful that would be the case. She agreed the levels of known radiation types were low, but the newly discovered types scattered throughout the event caused her to repeatedly suggest that some sort of bunkers or civil defense fallout shelters be built. Government officials had taken the suggestion under advisement, officially. Unofficially it was considered to be an alarmist attitude, and no bunkers were built.
When M4 engulfed Earth the exotic dust molecules combined with cosmic rays rained through the atmosphere and the sight was generally considered magically beautiful by most people. It appeared like a combination of Northern Lights and the most immense fireworks show imaginable. Multicolored shooting stars twinkled as they fell; a shower of mostly gold and green sparks filled the sky both day and night for the first few days before slowly tapering off. Both on Earth and aboard the ISS Geiger counters and a host of other radiation detecting devices indicated there was no negative health risks. The levels were simply considered too low.
Many skeptical folks around the world doubted the assurances even before the event arrived. They stockpiled food, water, medicine, and weapons just in case. Better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it, was their unspoken philosophy.
The vast majority of humanity thought the skeptics were being silly and merely enjoyed watching the unprecedented interstellar fireworks display.
When the pyrotechnics ended and, even after several days, no one fell ill or died most of the skeptics felt foolish and emerged from their bunkers and shelters. It seemed everyone had been needlessly worried.
Ming refused to calm down as the instruments detected a gradual increase in one of the unknown radiation types. Relieved officials dismissed her concerns but did award her a dubious recognition. The most plentifully accumulating radiation specimen was christened Yeow-Rays.
Ming pestered the ISS physician to take what he considered to be an unwarranted amount of blood specimens from the other astronauts. The amount of Yeow-Rays found in the entire crew, including herself, were approximately a hundred times higher than those on the planet's surface. But the physician repeatedly pointed out that no one was ill.
If things had instantly gone bad during the interstellar fireworks, if there had been sickness and death, perhaps the world would have survived. But it was weeks after the event arrived that things changed. At first there were scattered reports from around the world about unexplained cases of mass murder. These disturbing stories went on for days, but at first law-enforcement authorities handled most of them with little trouble. Doctors and medical researchers began trying to make sense of the violent deaths by searching for a viral or bacteria that might be the cause. Their search for a cause was unsuccessful while the number of violent outbreaks multiplied with no common factor.
International travel was stopped as many theorized that perhaps Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, or perhaps even the United States developed and introduced a poison or man-made virus which was responsible. There was no evidence of such a diabolical scheme but the news media rarely known to check facts quickly adopted this idea.
As the number of violent murders and riots grew an already bad situation was made worse in a myriad of man-made ways. Wars were declared, countless missiles were launched, militaries fought, and very quickly civilization fell.
It was a decidedly disturbing experience for Ming and the rest of the station's crew to witness the unraveling of civilization. The crew consisted of some of the planet's most intelligent people and yet no one could make sense out of the mindless slaughter. Far too many major cities became desolate radioactive wastelands, others were cast into darkness and chaos as a chain reaction of Electromagnetic Pulses, EMP, devastated much of the world's electrical systems. One of the ISS electrical engineers theorized the EMP events were probably related to scattered reports he'd read about power substations that had been failing. The frequency of outages grew in the weeks following the cosmic fireworks. He shared his belief the accumulated cosmic dust and perhaps even the Yeow-Rays were responsible.
The rest of the crew understood that he was probably right, but as they witnessed the end of the world it hadn't seemed particularly important.
Gradually some places on Earth restored some semblance of sanity and the crew monitored all the communications possible. A television station in Norway broadcast reports and showed hours of videos. Most were a disjointed confusing series of clips showing masses of people running and savagely attacking other folks. Ming stopped watching when a video clip showed a mass of several hundred people overrunning a fenced in school. It appeared as if the video were recorded from a remote controlled drone. There had been troops in what someone identified as German uniforms behind the fence. They were firing at the mass of people charging the fence with some type of rifles that none of the crew could identify. The footage clearly showed people being shot; some so much that they were literally shredded into pieces, but only a tiny percent fell dead. Ming turned away from the horrific images soon after the bloody mob of people began throwing themselves against and through some of the school windows. She saw dozens of young children pouring out of the other side of the building. They ran like sheep but much of the mob of bloody people had circled around the school. Ming heard gasps and crying from those who kept watching. She had her fingers covering her eyes but peeked through as Pavel whispered, “Climb, girl, climb.”
Ming peeked and watched a girl, who couldn't be any more than ten years old, climbing over a tall fence. It was on the opposite side where the mob came through. The drone flew closer and showed the girl's tear covered face and numerous cuts on her hands that she got grabbing the combination razor and barbed wire top. The girl was obviously terrified and in great pain but seemed to somehow hear Pavel's encouragement, “Go, girl, go.”
A few other crew members were holding their breath but everyone watched, even Ming.
The girl tottered at the top of the fence for a moment then leaped into a lake that was on the far side of the fence. She surfaced and began swimming. Ming jumped in surprise as several crew members shouted and cheered.
Many hours of videos followed. Some were almost mundane looking and showed normal looking people getting off buses at what appeared to be a military base. But the vast majority only showed bloody, insane looking, people running in mobs and attacking regular folks that were either fighting or fleeing.
Because the broadcast language was Norwegian, and no one on the crew spoke it, it took quite some time to make any sense out of what was said. Pavel understood enough of the German to pick up a few things that were being said. When other crewmen asked what was being said, Pavel said, “I believe they are saying Ragnarok has come. Demons, the gods, and the dead themselves have arisen to bring about the end... Ragnarok.”
Over time a less mythological answer was theorized by the ISS physician. The Yeow-Rays had caused a kind of murder madness in the living. When several crew members asked how someone could be alive after being repeatedly shot, the doctor shrugged and said, “I've overheard the whispers. And though it’s possible that the dead...” he cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable before continuing, “That the dead have somehow... um been mutated by the Yeow-Rays and that they appear to be undead... there's no way to prove it.”
She wasn't even aware she was humming an old song that Louis used to sometimes play aboard the station. It was a bit muddled in her memory. Ming couldn't remember the song's title or the singer, yet slowly she half whispered half sang a few snippets of semi-accurately recalled lyrics while drifting down through the darkness. “This is Major Yeow to ground control. The stars looked very different today. Here I am floating in a kind of can. I'm feeling a tiny bit blue and there's nothing I can do.”
It was the oddes
t sensation, and the last she imagined experiencing, but Ming was smiling and felt totally relaxed as she continued singing. The analytical part of her mind tried to suggest that the initial adrenalin rush caused by leaving the station was gone and a kind of emotional exhaustion was taking over. It made sense to her but she kept singing and watched the decreasing altitude indicator with heavy- sleepy feeling- eyes. A tiny fraction of her logical mind computed the remaining distance and she incorporated the information into the nearly muttered song. “Earth isn't blue... and I'm coming home to you... in just few-” Her eyelids, which had already been nearly shut, closed completely.
“You had us worried, Meow, now wake up,” Louis said while gently shaking Ming's shoulder.
She opened her eyes and was blinded by the brilliant blue sky and sunlight. After blinking for a few moments and gently rubbing her eyes, she could see Louis kneeling at her side. Just behind him there was a chocolate brown colored horse that was placidly chomping at some tall grass. Beyond the horse there were plains that appeared to stretch out forever.
“Louis?” Ming asked looking back at the man's bushy bearded and mustache covered face.
He slid back the black leather cowboy style Stetson and smiled broadly. “Welcome home, Ming. I don't rightly reckon how you did it, but you made landfall only twenty miles from Cheyenne. Got a message over the CB radio from some Indians. They were shepherding one of the buffalo herds and reported spotting your parachute just a while before dawn. You made it, Miss Meow. I knew you could. Easier than falling off a log, right?”
Ming turned her head and took a deep breath. The air smelled earthy, like a newly turned garden at planting time. She sighed and stood up. “I thought somehow I was off course. But... I guess I was wrong.”
All Things Zombie: Chronology of the Apocalypse Page 26