Pulse: A Collection of Short and Flash Science Fiction

by Frank Carey

  “He can’t,” Sam said.

  “Why the hell not?” she snapped.

  “Because he’s the only person who can arm and set the EMP. It’s keyed to his and only his biometrics.”

  “And do you think for a moment I would let my team go in there without me?” he asked. One other thing you should all be aware of is Gen. Morris has activated General Order Seven-Twelve if we fail to activate the EMP before the force field fails.

  “What the hell is a GO 7-12,” Margo asked as she saw Raj and Juan get pale.

  “Nuclear destruct. They drop a nuclear bunker buster bomb centered on the antenna mast on the roof of the Todihara Ltd. building from ten thousand feet up. It will bore through the building and explode when it gets underground. Even the smallest bomb in inventory will level the city.

  “They can’t do that!” Olivia said. “They’ll kill millions.”

  “And save the planet. I ran simulations when I found out about Section Twenty-Eight taking our work. The most favorable projection is total world infection in three weeks.”

  “Boss, if that was the best, what the hell was the worst?” Sam asked, his face ashen with shock.

  “Forty-eight hours.”

  Olivia saw the look in Seth’s eyes and said nothing, opting instead to sit back in her seat and close her eyes.

  “Raj, ETA?” Seth asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

  “Ten minutes,” he replied as he checked the GPS unit. Around them ZomBots appeared more frequently as they approached their target building.

  Seth got up and moved to the seat in front of Olive. He sat there, elbows on his knees; head cupped in his hands, and just looked at her. He knew she knew he was there, so he waited, just looking at her. He couldn’t tell her his worry about not returning from this mission, nor could he tell her how worried he was about her and his team. All he could do was look at her.

  Her eyes snapped open. “What?”

  “Nothing. Just looking at you.”

  “Why?”

  “I missed you. I didn’t like the way our last conversation ended. I’ve seen way too much death and destruction the last few hours. I love the way the color of your hair changes from the tips to the roots. I never noticed how blond your eyebrows are.”

  She self-consciously brushed her bangs out of the way of her eyes. “You like my hair? It’s something new the stylist suggested.”

  “I love it.” He picked up her hand and looked at her fingernails. “Is that a picture of me?” he asked about the nail on her left ring finger.

  She pulled her hand away and tried to hide it from him. “Yes,” she said with a smile.

  A collective “Awwww,” came from the team. Seth and Olive looked up and saw them watching, even Raj through the rearview mirror. Seth smiled while Olive blushed.

  The MPC turned a corner and came to an abrupt stop. “Boss, got a situation up here,” Raj said.

  Set walked up and peered out the front window. The street was filled with several hundred ZomBots, many blocking the gate and all looking at the MPC.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Juan said.

  Seth looked at the motionless crowd of silver people. “Olive, you still up with your pistol skills?”

  “Yeah. Got First Place in the company competition a week ago.”

  “I was planning on having you stay with the vehicle, but that ship has sailed.”

  A sound like that from a large insect passed overhead. The drone had arrived and was delivering their package to the loading dock.

  “Megan, issue a vest and weapons to Olive. Raj, push those things out of the way and cut the gate open with the forward lasers. Raise the window shields and go remote in case the beams are reflected by our friends. Once the gate is ready, back-in. We’ll pick up the package and head into the building. Hopefully the MPC will block the ZomBot's forward progress,” Seth ordered. He turned around to face his team. “Gear-up. We hit the ground running. Olive, keep close to one of the team at all times. This is going to be very tight. Margo, apprise Command of our situation and tell them we may be out of communications range once we’re inside.”

  “Got it boss,” she said as she activated the radio. Meanwhile, Raj maneuvered the MPC into position, raised the window shields, and started work on cutting through the gate.

  Seth walked back and sat down next to Olive as she checked her weapons and spare ammo clips. She looked at him and smiled. “We’re going to be fine, Big Guy," she said as she patted his thigh.

  He hoped she was right.

  ###

  Dir. Quinn and Gen. Morris listened to the report from Seth’s team while chaos ensued around them as the whole command evacuated. The general looked at the master time clock above the radio and grimaced. “Corporal, get me Eastern Air Command.”

  “Bob, you can’t do this,” Natalie said as she thought of the millions who would die if a nuke was dropped in the middle of the city.

  “Natalie, my people ran projections the moment the force field went up. If I don’t stop this outbreak, the planet becomes fully ZomBot in two weeks on the outside. That’s almost eight billion souls converted to ZomBots in fourteen days. The President has been briefed and has authorized the use of a nuke.”

  “General, Col. Saunders is on the line,” the Corporal said as he handed the general a headset.

  “Colonel, this is General Robert Morris, Ident Omega-one-one-six, countersign blue suede shoes. You are go for launch. I repeat, you are go for launch.” He looked at Natalie. “Colonel, the crew is to circle the target when they reach the coordinates and wait for further orders, understand?”

  The Colonel confirmed the wait on station command.

  “Very good. Stand by for further orders, Colonel. General Morris out.”

  “Bob, thank you.”

  “Do not misunderstand me, Nat. We drop the minute that force field goes into failure mode.”

  “I understand,” she said as she walked off to find a secluded place to make a call, a call she had hoped never to have to make. She found a corner behind some crates and sat down. She flipped open her phone and dialed a number she had memorized years ago.

  “Hello?” someone said at the other end of the call.

  “Sherman? It’s Natalie.”

  “Nat! Damn, girl, it’s been a while. Loved the card you sent last Christmas, though how the hell you got it here is beyond me.”

  “I’m glad you liked it. Listen, Sherm, I’m having a bit of a problem...”

  “I saw! The news feeds are flooded with the story. I told your people that nanobots could be dangerous.”

  “I know, we should have listened, which is why we need your help.”

  “You know I can’t interfere with your planet’s internal affairs.”

  “I know, I know. Listen, we’re going to drop a nuke on the Todihara Ltd. Building. I’ve got people in there trying to stop the bots with an EMP device. If they’re successful, there won’t be a nuke, but they will be killed in the discharge.”

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to rescue your team if they complete their mission. What if they don’t?”

  “Forget I made this call and consider us even. They wouldn’t want to be saved while a million others died. For a bunch of geeks, they have a very well-developed sense of honor.”

  “OKay, I’ll be on-station in three minutes. You do realize this’ll blow my cover.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “Not to worry. You know me; lemonade from lemons and all that.”

  “Thanks, Sherm.”

  “Hey, Nat, one question: who was running your Section Twenty-Eight? Not you, I hope.”

  “Mavis Huong.”

  “Mavis. It figures. Well, gotta go. Bye.”

  “Bye, Sherman,” she said as the line went dead. She sighed as she put her phone away and walked out to rejoin the general. “I hope to hell this works,” she said.

  When she returned to where the general was standing all hel
l had broken loose. On a viewscreen was a gigantic alien spaceship hovering directly over the Todihara Ltd. building. It was hanging there, doing absolutely nothing.

  “One of ours, General?” she asked while trying to stifle a chuckle. Sherman, you maniac, she thought to herself as the ship slowly turned ala that movie about the Fourth of July alien invasion. She knew it was all theater.

  “That damn thing overflew us at Mach eighteen, and then came to an abrupt stop over Todihara and, no, it isn’t one of ours. I can’t drop the nuke until that thing moves,” he said as the chaos around them ratcheted up ten notches. “You have any idea what that thing is?”

  She looked at him and said while suppressing a smile, “Nope, not a clue,” which was a complete lie as she had taken a ride on it a couple of decades ago--when she worked at Area 51.

  ###

  “Brace for impact!” Raj yelled as he slammed the MPC into reverse and floored it, the 540 horsepower engine propelling the seventeen metric ton vehicle through the iron gates as if they were made of plywood. Raj held the accelerator pedal down as the Havoc raced down the narrow driveway until coming to a stop just short of the UAV carrying the equipment.

  Triggering the rear door release, Seth yelled, “Move!” as he looked out the front window and saw a horde of ZomBots approaching. Seth grabbed the bag off the back of the UAV while Raj picked the lock on the back door. Meanwhile, Sam, Margo, Megan, and Juan started taking out ZomBots with explosive rounds from their SARCs.

  “We’re in," Raj yelled as he held the door open. Once inside, he and Juan barricaded the door with a pair of large desks probably used by the dock master.

  “This way,” Olive said as she headed down the loading bay to a large door marked “Closet.”

  “Liv, you sure about this?” Seth asked as she shot the lock off the door and swung it open. Once inside she grabbed the third coat hook on the right side rack and pulled it. The back wall of the closet slid aside to reveal a long stairway leading down into the bowels of the Earth.

  “Pretty sure,” she said as Juan and Margo took the lead. Seth, Olive, and Megan followed with Sam and Raj bringing up the rear.

  “I wish I had brought my mauler,” Juan said as he checked his corners with his SARC.

  “Next time,” Margo said as she performed the same checks.

  “There ain’t going to be a next time,” Megan growled.

  They made it to the nineteenth sub-level without incident, but they could hear footfalls on the stairway above them. Once the rest of them were through the door onto the nineteenth sub-level, Sam racked a grenade into his FN40 launcher and fired it upwards before ducking inside. They heard the explosion followed by debris and silver body parts falling past the window inset in the door.

  “Olive, which way?” Seth asked as they quickly put distance between them and the door.

  “Down here,” she said heading down a long corridor lined with doors, each with a small slot window looking into its interior. None of the doors were labeled and all but one was dark. Sam looked into the lit one and saw a stack of money a yard wide and deep, and at least nine feet tall. Olive grabbed him and pushed him along. “Trust me, you don’t want to know,” she said.

  They came to a blank wall at the end of the corridor.

  “Your building is on the other side of this wall and about a foot of soil. Your Section nineteen starts about here,” she said holding her hand about a foot off the floor.

  “Confirmed,” Megan said putting her scanner away.

  “Damn, Ms. Pratt. You’re good,” Sam said.

  “Everyone! Call me Olive, Olivia, or Liv, but don’t call me Ms. Pratt. It makes me feel old,” she said as she stood back while Seth mounted the breaching system on the wall. It looked like a thick rubber pad about the size of normal door. A small plastic box was mounted on the upper right corner.

  "Margo, call Command and let them know we're changing buildings."

  Margo pulled out the radio and tried to connect to command, but only got static. Lots of it. "Boss, no joy on contact. Something's jamming us."

  "Jamming us?" Seth said while pulling out his radio and trying it. He had the same luck she had. He turned up the volume so everyone could hear the odd static.

  "It's digital, and powerful," Sam said while listening. "That's bleed from a higher frequency. It’s overwhelming our circuits, whatever it is."

  "Great. We're cut off," Juan said as Seth and Margo put their radios away.

  "OKay, everyone ready?" Seth asked as he pulled the remote trigger from the bag.

  They all gave him the thumbs-up.

  “Arming!” Seth yelled as he pressed the box. A small red light at the top came on and started to blink.

  Sam moved back and kicked in the door of an empty room, and everyone filed in. Once safely inside, Seth yelled, “Fire in the hole,” before pressing a button on the remote. There was a loud thump followed by dust and debris filling the hallway. When they stepped out they found a rectangular hole in the wall which opened up into a room on the other side.

  One by one they stepped up into the room. When they were all in, Juan, Sam, and Margo lobbed flash-bang grenades into the now-empty hallway. They went off, causing the ceiling to collapse.

  “We’re committed,” Seth said as he opened the door a crack and looked out,

  “Or we should be committed," Megan whispered.

  “Copy that,” Seth said. “Clear.”

  They stepped out into the hallway and got their bearings. “Damn, Olive, you’re good,” Margo said as she checked her scanner. “Seth's office is right down this hallway.”

  “Move out,” Seth said quietly as everyone checked their corners and doorways.

  They made it to their destination without incident and found the destroyed sentry bots where they had landed. Around them were walls pocked with bullet holes and explosion damage. Megan scanned the room then yelled, “Clear!”

  They ran in leaving Juan and Raj to stand guard in the hallway. “Megan, in the safe are several vials of Serum 408 and a hypospray. Dose all of you including Olive. Hopefully it will turn any bot entering your bloodstream into something useful and not deadly.”

  “What about you?”

  “The dose you gave me should be good for at least another two weeks. Olive, could you give her a hand?”

  “On it,” she said as she walked over to the safe.

  "Margo, grab the notebooks; Juan the hard drives," Seth said as he walked over to the desk to survey the damage. “Dammit to hell,” Seth said as he pulled his desk away from the wall to reveal a gaping hole the size of a half-refrigerator.

  “What’s wrong?” Megan asked.

  “It’s gone,” Seth said.

  “What’s gone?” Sam asked as he walked over and looked in the hole.

  “The EMP device. Someone removed it from the wall...”

  “And dragged it in here,” Olive said as Megan gave her an injection. She pointed to drag marks that led from the wall to the destroyed elevator. She looked up and saw what was left of the elevator car effectively plugging the shaft. “They dragged it down to a lower level.”

  “This is bad,” Margo said as Megan hyposprayed her while she peered down the shaft. “Something down there knew what it was and knew we were coming, which means we’re dealing with an intelligent sentient of unknown origin. The bots were never programmed for this kind of behavior.”

  Olive looked at all of them and asked, “You mean you all created some kind of life form? An intelligent life form that can think? Wow! This is big! I wonder if it needs a lawyer.”

  Everyone stopped and looked at her, even Seth.

  “What?” she asked.

  Seth shook his head and said, “We need to get down there, but the elevator is toast. Any suggestions?”

  “The west stairwell is the closest and the least used,” Juan suggested.

  “Then the west stairwell it is. We go down, set the EMP, and get out of the building through the main entrance. On
ce we're outside we can run over to the bar across the street.”

  “You mean the one with the old bank vault inside?” Margo asked.

  “Yeah, that should protect us from the EM pulse,” he said. “Megan, did you inject everyone?”

  “Yes, sir. We have four vials left and a partial still in the injector.”

  “Good. Keep the injector ready in case we need to give someone a booster.”

  “Got it,” she replied as she put the loaded spray into her pocket.

  “Right. Move out,” he said as Margo and Raj led the way down the corridor to the west stairwell. They entered and made their way down nine levels until they hit the doorway leading into Section Twenty-Eight.

  Seth looked through the small window set into the door. “Dark, very dark. Go to lights,” he said while flipping on the small flashlight attached to the end of his weapon. The others followed suit while Olive pulled out a flashlight, activated it, and went into a Harries hold.

  They exited the stairwell and waited while Margo scanned for the EMP device and Megan scanned for life signs.

  “EMP is fifty yards straight ahead. Someone’s been busy down here. The scans don't match the blueprints I have on file,” Margo said as she put her scanner away.

  “Intermittent life signs all around us, though none are human or anything else familiar. This isn't good.”

  “What were they doing down here?” Olivia asked as something long and silver ran past her foot.

  “We’re not sure,” Seth replied as he moved his light around the floor in a vain attempt at finding what had run past Olive. “From the videos we’ve seen and the thing that attacked us, I would surmise they were trying to use our nanobot/serum system to augment living tissue with nanobot-generated systems.”

  “Yeah. We have the technology so we can make the soldiers faster, stronger, better. We call it the Frankenstein Complex,” Sam said in a rare moment of seriousness. “You know: humans are good, robots are good, so robotic humans would be fantastic. The sort of thing that ends up with a lot of death, destruction, and screaming.”

  “Sounds like when Seth cooks dinner,” Olive said with a smirk.

  “Very funny. I’ll have you know my recipe for turducken has been handed down for generations.”