by Alex Bratton
“How are you even standing?” she asked.
Doyle looked at her coldly. “I thought you would take care of yourself. What have you been doing out here all this time?”
“I’m… sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You don’t seem to do much thinking, but you need to start pulling your weight. You’re not on your own anymore. If you make a mistake, we’ll both pay for it. I need you to think about what’s going on around you instead of just following along in a daze.”
“You’re right. I’ve just been so… I…” Mina’s voice broke, but she swallowed her tears before he could see them. Crying wouldn’t solve any of her problems. “What do you need me to do?”
“Tonight, just take the first watch. Let me sleep a few hours. All you have to do is wake me if you hear anything suspicious.”
Mina nodded. Tears still threatened to spill down her cheeks, but she refused to let Doyle see her break down. She stood, looking at the maze of trees that covered the steep mountain. Thunder rumbled in the distance. They could make it to the top before dark. Her worn-out legs burned with every step, but she didn’t want him to know how tired she was. She stubbornly began the ascent without waiting for him, to show him that she did not always need someone else to lead the way. Doyle followed in silence.
Chapter Seven
“That’s ten known metropolitan areas,” a male voice on the radio said. “Confirmed cascading power grid failure everywhere else.”
“What about enemy activity?” Nash’s operator asked. “Over.”
“Reports of destruction of heavily populated areas, moving inland to Appalachia, also the Rockies… Reports of smaller attacks in mountains where large groups of survivors are gathering.”
Lincoln stood with Nelson outside the communications tent in the middle of camp. Nelson carried his backpack on his shoulders. He still refused to go anywhere without his unusable laptop. The tent flap was propped open. Nash was inside, anxiously gripping the back of the operator’s chair. The operator was talking to a man from Montana, an off-grid survivalist who’d ridden out the attacks in the backcountry of the Absaroka Range. About twenty soldiers gathered around, crowding the tent and spilling out under the trees.
“What about central command?” the operator asked. “Anyone heard from them? Over.”
“Negative. I can’t confirm there is a central command. All of our contacts so far have been amateur operators. You’re the first military unit we’ve found. Over.”
Nelson nudged Lincoln. “This can’t be the only hardened radio the military owns,” he said quietly. “We know the government has protected systems, so why aren’t they broadcasting?”
Hardened electronics were those that had been shielded from an electromagnetic pulse. After much debate, the team had concluded that a powerful EMP was the most likely cause of the widespread blackouts. Although they suspected it when convoy vehicles had stalled, and their cell phones and computers died at the same time, they had hoped it was localized. The ensuing radio silence and trickle-in reports proved that theory to be wildly optimistic.
Lincoln shrugged. “Maybe they can’t for some reason. Or maybe it’s a tactical decision. Maintaining radio silence while they plan their next move.”
“Yeah, but listen. All those units were moving into affected cities before the attack. All those were destroyed. If any armed forces survived, you’d think they’d scramble to make contact and regroup.”
Lincoln rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s got to be a reasonable explanation. They’re certain to be using protected networks we don’t know about, not open airwaves.”
“Yeah, but…” Nelson lowered his voice to a whisper as the operator signed off and people began to disperse. A tall woman with captain’s double bars on her collar walked past, frowning at the two civilians. Nelson waited until she passed. “Nash would know about them, wouldn’t he? You’d think he’d have brought more sophisticated, protected battle equipment, but he seems to have nothing.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Lincoln answered as they walked past the drab olive mess tent that looked even dingier in the pale morning sunshine. “A lot of this doesn’t add up. They hurry us out here, pretending it’s vitally important, but when we arrive, we’re crippled by both a lack of information and technology. We have a few running vehicles for power but no generators. Tents and food but only one working radio for contacting the outside. No one thought to send computers or any special equipment to help us with this.”
Nash and a couple of the others had computers with them, of course, but they were fried like everything else.
“And we’re missing what could be the most important resource of all, someone to tell us what in creation we’re supposed to do here in the first place. They have our models. Why didn’t they deploy them using their own people?”
“I think we know why,” Nelson said. “We were sent out here in a hurry with the intention of resupply, but everything was attacked. I wonder if anyone even knows we’re here.”
“Is that why Cummings or his people didn’t meet us like he said they would?”
“Either that, or somebody didn’t want him helping us,” Nelson muttered conspiratorially. “Someone who didn’t want us doing our job.”
“Like who?” Lincoln asked. “Conspiracy theories make more sense today than they did a few months ago, but why would someone sabotage ARCHIE? Assuming it was worth sabotaging, that is.”
“Without Cummings, we may never know.”
Alvarez hurried over to them as they reached their tents. Lincoln camped in his own tent again, though he still felt weak. He was silently grateful to ease onto the log he used as a chair.
“Hey, guys!” Alvarez said brightly. “I just heard about the broadcast. What’d we find out?”
Nelson sat near the low fire, sticking his feet as close to its warmth as he could tolerate. “In addition to Atlanta, New York, and DC, they've confirmed Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, LA, Seattle, Kansas City, and Houston.”
Disappointed, Alvarez sank down into a dusty camp chair. “Didn’t all those metro areas have alien towers?”
“I think so. In addition to about thirty other cities in the US. Not to mention the hundreds worldwide. And get this. They weren’t towers. They were ships.”
“Ships? As in flying-around-in-the-sky ships?”
“Yeah. Think about all the video footage, the speculation. The aliens had already landed.” Nelson glanced down at his dirty Space Invaders t-shirt.
Alvarez pushed her glasses up her nose. “Do you think all of those other places are gone, too?” Her cheerful demeanor had sobered, her voice quiet.
Neither Nelson nor Lincoln answered. Voicing it would make it true.
Instead, Lincoln asked, “Where’s Carter?”
Alvarez cleared her throat. “He went fishing.”
“Oh.” Lincoln should have guessed. Carter had found a secret fishing hole and disappeared there on fine days.
Lincoln pulled the damaged sketchbook out of his pocket and flipped through the stained, torn pages. Before the attacks, Carter would have taken the book fishing with him in case he had an idea he couldn’t wait to write down.
The Army was still clearing the mine, searching for Halston. Lincoln, disillusioned by the news of his sister, was silently grateful he wasn’t required to enter the mine yet. As he recovered from his physical injury, grief had dampened his curiosity about the rooms he had found. The memory of the stabbing and his narrow brush with death, although fresh in his mind, were secondary to his guilt about Mina.
Nelson shrugged off his backpack and tossed it aside. Then, he retrieved his blanket from his tent, wrapping it around his shoulders before returning to the fire. “Do you think the ships triggered multiple EMPs? It makes sense, doesn’t it? Although I don’t know why they’d want so many when one big pulse could have wiped out everything.”
Prevailing theory conjectured that a large nuclear bomb detonated high in
the atmosphere would create an EMP powerful enough to cause physical damage to power delivery systems and other sensitive modern electronics. It could reach structures within hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles from the blast site. Modern equipment was especially susceptible to the initial wave because the current generated from the pulse would overload and melt tiny, delicate circuitry. The team suspected this first wave had taken out their electronics. The biggest bombs could also cause another response seconds after the first, which would travel over the long lines connecting power plants and substations, causing further damage and blackouts. This was known as cascading power grid failure.
Dissenting voices claimed that a powerful EMP was still incapable of destroying everything at once, but almost all experts agreed that recovery from a massive attack could take years. No one knew precisely how long America would be without power, and the country’s interdependence on automated computer systems meant more catastrophes were inevitable.
“But they didn’t detonate a nuclear bomb, did they?” Alvarez asked. “Do we know?”
“They could have,” Lincoln answered. “We don’t have any evidence of one here, but what about our nukes? Nuclear facilities and subs are protected from EMPs. Why didn’t they launch?”
“We don’t know they didn’t,” Alvarez said darkly.
Nelson shook his head. “We would have heard about it on the radio.”
“I don’t know,” Lincoln answered. “Survivors with radios are scattered all over, hiding. Would they have seen the fallout?”
“For a moment, let’s say the aliens didn’t use nukes and that we didn’t detonate them over our own territory. How would the relatively small ships be able to create such a widespread response?”
“I think,” Lincoln said, “that if they were able to place the ships overnight without anyone seeing them, then it follows they have the technology to generate an EMP that doesn’t destroy the Earth but still cripples our infrastructure. They wanted to be thorough.”
“Do they need our planet for something, then?” Alvarez asked rhetorically, her eyes fixed on the trees overhead.
“Seems like it.”
Nelson took his wallet out from his jeans pocket and opened it. A wad of hundred-dollar bills, folded in various shapes or crinkled, had been shoved inside. Citing bank failures and privacy concerns, Nelson always carried large sums of cash with him, using it as much as possible. He took out the bills one by one and smoothed them against his leg, straightening them carefully into a stack. Nelson finished lining up the bills and rolled them lengthwise into a straw. Then, he stuck one end in the fire.
Alvarez cried out, “What are you doing?”
She rushed to grab the bills from Nelson. Too late. They had already caught fire, looking like a ludicrous green birthday candle in his hand.
Nelson held it up and watched it burn with a look of displaced satisfaction on his face. “They’re worthless now, anyway.”
“Nelson, you’re crazy. You don’t know that for sure!”
“Come on, Alvarez.” His voice remained calm. “Major civilian and government infrastructures have been destroyed. Telecommunications, financial systems, not to mention the disruption of transportation and food distribution. It’s over.” The bills burned toward Nelson’s fingertips. He threw the remainder into the fire. “We’re on our own.”
Lincoln agreed.
A stray thunderstorm obscured Calla’s view of the mountains below. The Nomad dipped below the cloud cover, but the lashing rain toyed with her ship’s readings. Where was her contact? As she flew over a large encampment, tiny heat signatures glowed in front of her. The topographical display showed most of the clumps in the valley with tendrils of red creeping up the surrounding mountain slopes. No one had reported this camp yet, so either she had discovered it first, or rogues were hiding there. She pulled up a different overlay of the same area, one that identified hybrids only. Yes, two resided here. Calla refrained from contacting them, however, unwilling to alert them if they were rogue. She would return.
The ship turned south and flew out of the thunderstorm to land. Calla disembarked under cover of darkness, sending the ship away. Her mission required secrecy, and the Nomad would draw attention. Following orders, the ship disappeared on its own into the clouds. Calla smiled. The Nomad would never go rogue.
When she entered the hidden bunker, the undiluted smells of damp mildew and stale air told her she was first to arrive. Lights turned on automatically as she went from room to room, double-checking that she was alone. Then, she concentrated, reaching out into the woods. Her contact, Williams, was very late. Had he already turned from her? She re-sent her summons, communicating through the alien symbols etched into the skin on her chest. The same ones that allowed her to speak to her masters and the adarria facilitated telepathic communication between hybrids.
Calla entered the dormitory and hopped onto a top bunk, muddy boots soiling the bare mattress. She waited, allowing herself only an hour’s sleep. When she woke, she mentally scanned the surrounding forest again. Nothing. He wasn’t going to show. She left the dormitory and grabbed her bag on the way out of the bunker.
The same line of thunderstorms the Nomad had flown through was threatening to form here as well. To the northwest, trees cracked in the wind, and lightning struck three times in quick succession. Tracking would be difficult, but Calla couldn’t afford to wait for the storm to pass, or she would lose her quarry. She began to climb the steep mountain slope, heading straight for the heart of the storm. Before she reached the ridge, rain poured down in torrents, soaking her even beneath the cover of the trees.
There. She felt something. Closer than she thought, and he was already making mistakes like following the ridgeline where he was easy to track. Calla changed direction to run along under the ridge, jumping over fallen trees and climbing rocks while the storm tried to beat her back. Instead of slowing, she used the adrenaline rush to run harder, faster. At the peak of the mountain, Calla turned and headed down, dropping twenty feet into a tall, dead tree. She would take him by surprise from above.
Calla jumped agilely from tree to tree. A branch slashed her face like a whip, but she ignored the blood on her cheek, using the pain to fuel her purpose. Finally, the trees thinned, and she jumped thirty feet to the ground, sliding down the wet, leaf-covered slope.
The rain had stopped. Calla brushed back the hair sticking to her face and looked around. To her enhanced eyes, shades of blue and black revealed rocks, trees, water, and, fifty feet below, someone crossing a stream at the bottom of the mountain.
Calla crouched, a panther ready to spring. Then, she paused. Someone else walked with him, fifty yards ahead, disappearing into the trees. Strange. The Nomad had only reported one here.
Surprising one was easy. Two would be more challenging. She hid downwind for now, but the storm was whipping wild tunnels through the valley. They might scent her at any moment. Calla climbed below them to follow at a safer distance. As far as she could tell, neither hybrid had realized she was hunting them.
When the two reached the north end of the valley, they parted without a word. So they weren’t traveling together, only meeting. Why? Calla wanted to keep an eye on her original prey, but she burned to know the identity of the other. As she paused to decide which to pursue, she became aware of someone else, a shadow or a thought behind her. She turned.
A flash of lightning illuminated the valley for a brief moment. He stood high above, on the same mountain, watching her hunt. Calla did not have to see his face to know who he was. She felt him as he reached out to her, her commander, Dar Ceylin.
Unwilling to give away her position, she slid deeper into the trees, stealthily returning to her original quarry. This path would keep her downwind of her quarry and Dar Ceylin. When Calla sensed the commander turn and follow her, she knew she’d been spotted and signaled him to stop.
At that last jab, Calla glanced up angrily, but Dar Ceylin was still hidden by the trees.
With that last admonishment, Dar Ceylin disappeared deeper into the trees. He was not going to make this assignment easy on her. Technically, he didn’t have to obey any of Calla’s orders. Calla suspected it was only the memory of their lost friendship that kept him from sabotaging her current mission.
The day arrived slowly, a cloudy sky shrouding the sun. Calla doubled her pace through the woods. Williams knew she was coming. He was hiding. Eventually, she spotted him running through the trees ahead.
She looked around for a shortcut and ran below for a while. Williams had been too preoccupied with evading her and failed to watch the forest ahead, forcing himself to climb a short, treed precipice. Idiot, she thought. Williams almost took the fun out of the chase. Almost.
Calla ran straight up around the precipice and was standing at the top when he arrived. Williams was a short, stocky redhead and considerably outweighed her. He tried to use this advantage to throw her off balance, but Calla kicked him in the face before hauling him up by the hair. She had her knife at his throat and her knee to his back before he could stand.