by Mike Kraus
“What? What is it?”
“You wanted a boat; there’s a boat!”
Rick turned the nose of the car towards the water as he stopped, the white headlights casting a wide beam across the river. The water was muddy and filled with various parts of trees, likely a result of the earthquakes that were stirring up sediment and causing trees to fall in. Out on the other side of the river, past the debris and barely illuminated by the headlights, was the vague outline of a long, flat rectangular object. The object was large and looked like it was stuck on the eastern bank. Rick stared at it for a long moment before nodding slowly, a smile spreading across his face. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
A pair of binoculars and some careful studying of the shadow-shrouded barge revealed that it was tied up to a small dock on the opposite bank, held in place by a single line that had somehow not broken or become dislodged. The pièce de résistance, though, was what was attached to the far end of the barge, gently rocking in the current of the river. A tugboat—a “pusher” boat—was still attached by cables and lines, and it had been tied off on a large tree that was a couple dozen feet up away from the edge of the river. Together the barge and the pusher kept each other from drifting away from shore while also providing two points of contact with land, reinforcing each other’s tie-offs and helping to keep the precarious pair relatively stable.
Whoever had been piloting the pusher had done an admirable job in securing both the barge and the pusher despite there being very little to work with. What had caused the pilots to want to abandon the craft was anyone’s guess, but Rick knew that unless he, Jane and Dr. Evans were to get lucky enough to find an intact bridge hours or perhaps days further up the river, the best shot they had at crossing in any reasonable amount of time was to use the barge and pusher.
Rick took a deep breath and unzipped his jacket, the rapidly cooling night air piercing through his shirt and prickling his skin. “Which one of you is the best swimmer?”
Jane’s eyes widened and she took a step back towards the car, shaking her head and raising her hands. “No way.”
“Doctor?” Rick looked at Dr. Evans.
“Ugh.” Dr. Evans groaned and nodded slowly. “I did swim competitively for a few years when I was in college.”
“Hey, that’s awesome! I haven’t dipped a toe in anything deeper than a puddle in years so if I go under you can just carry me on your back.” Rick grinned as he pulled his boots off.
“Couldn’t you just make a raft or something?” Jane watched as the two men disrobed down to their underwear. “Swimming in this weather at night across all of that sounds like a death wish.”
Rick grinned. “Not if we plan ahead.”
Chapter 9
Blacksburg, VA
“Okay. Just breathe. Just breathe.” Dianne closed her eyes and put her head back, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves and her racing heartbeat. For some reason that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she was having more trouble coping with the two men chasing after her than she had when she had walked into the metaphorical lion’s den to rescue Tina. She had been nervous then, but for some reason her narrow escape from the two men chasing her in Blacksburg had her even more on edge than before.
Should I just go home? The thought passed through Dianne’s mind once again and she didn’t immediately dismiss it. Despite her fortitude and will to press on she was forced to admit that she was starting to get scared by the prospect of facing the two men—and whoever else might be with them—again. Heading home without the medication Jason needed was a daunting option, and while she might be able to make up an excuse that would stand up to scrutiny for why she turned tail and ran, Dianne knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t continue pressing on.
“Okay.” Dianne took another deep breath, talking to herself again. “Hold it together. You just have to get to the LTAC and get the medication. Besides, it’s only two of them and you lost them. They don’t know where you’re going.” Dianne opened her eyes and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. “There’s only two of them. Of course… there’s only one of you.” She furrowed her brow as she realized that was the likely reason for what she was feeling. Being away from home with no one to assist her was a new experience and was the likely source for her increased levels of worry.
“Buck up, buttercup.” Dianne squared her shoulders and started moving again, weaving the truck farther into the city. She knew that the two men would likely continue to try and track her down, but she had a job to do. The sooner she finished doing it the sooner she could get back home, get Jason fixed up and then start planning on how to eliminate the threat to her and her family once and for all.
It took another half hour of slow driving to finally get to a point in the city where Dianne could see the LTAC. She spotted the large, rectangular building when she was still several blocks away. It sat above the surrounding structures, both because of its height and because it was the only building undamaged by fire in the area. Located in the midst of an oasis of green, the LTAC sat in the middle of one of the few spots of green grass and trees left in the city.
The Regency Long-Term Acute Care center was a combination of a nursing home and a hospital. Patients in need of moderate to intensive care for long periods of time—weeks to months—would be transferred from a hospital to the LTAC where their needs would be better served. Part of Regency’s amenities included its location inside a major city and well-manicured lawns and gardens on-site that allowed residents to relax, hopefully helping to accelerate the healing process.
With the autumn weather in full-swing most of the green grass had faded and the leaves on all but the pine trees were covering the ground instead of the branches. The first rays of the rising sun illuminated many of the details of the grounds and the building, though there was much still shrouded in shadow. What Dianne could see quite clearly, though, was that there was no easy path forward to the facility from where she was sitting.
While the grounds of the LTAC looked clear—except for the parking lot out front which was covered in the blackened remains of the vehicles that had been parked there—the roads around it were some of the most clogged Dianne had seen so far in her journey through the city. Melted and charred wreckage sat bumper to bumper on both lanes with only small breaks and gaps in between that might afford the possibility of passage through.
Dianne considered trying to push her way through the wreckage anyway, but the time and noise involved made her wary. Not only were there the two men who were searching for her to consider, but there could be any number of people left alive in the city who might seize on the opportunity to attack her. Got to get off the street and go on foot. Dianne’s stomach churned at the idea of leaving the relative safety of the truck but there was no other option. She pushed forward in the vehicle, circling around the area surrounding the LTAC as she looked for a place where she could park it out of sight.
Halfway through her drive she spotted a four-story parking garage located just off of the street she was on. The remains of a few cars blocked the entrance but inside the garage she could see that the path was relatively clear on the ground floor. She turned the truck towards the entrance, pushing through the vehicles in front and breaking the flimsy wooden gate that stood in her way.
Inside the front of the parking garage were dozens of spaces marked with blue paint, signifying that they were handicapped parking areas. Most of them were empty, aside from an intact white panel van that had a wheelchair ramp attachment mounted to the back. As Dianne looked through the rest of the garage she saw what she was expecting near the back, where the rest of the parking spaces began. Dozens of vehicles, all of them burned to the ground, were lined up in neat rows. There were undoubtedly more of them on the floors above, but Dianne didn’t bother driving up to check.
Taking one of the handicapped spaces to the far right of the inside of the garage, Dianne backed the truck up next to a wall, positioning it so that it was impossible t
o see from outside the structure and difficult to see even once inside. She double-checked her gear and glanced at her watch again, feeling her heartbeat quicken as she realized how much time had passed.
It had taken around an hour to get into the city, then getting to the LTAC had taken another two and a half. With nearly three hours down there were just over nine left to locate the medications Jason would need, get back out of the city and return home. She stepped out of the truck and slipped on her backpack, put her pistol in a waistband holster and grabbed her rifle out of the back seat. She verified that the rifle was loaded—including one in the chamber—and took a deep breath. “All right,” she whispered. “Let’s do this.”
Dianne jogged out of the parking garage, stopped at the entrance to briefly look down the street and continued running out across the road towards the LTAC. A couple block’s worth of buildings, roads and destroyed vehicles were between her and the edge of the facility and she wanted to get out of the open and inside the building as soon as possible. As she ran around and jumped over vehicles and debris scattered along the road she grew more and more thankful that she was going on foot. Seeing the destruction up close made her realize that there would have been no possible way for her to get the truck up to the facility and she would have likely gotten stuck less than a quarter of the way there.
As Dianne picked her way through the clogged street and sidewalks, she heard the sound of an engine off in the distance. Panic seized her by the throat and she pushed forward, moving as quickly as she could. Whatever vehicle was approaching was still a ways out but if it was the two men again she knew that they might stop and start searching for her again at any moment.
The climb up the hill to the LTAC facility was steeper than she thought and Dianne slipped more than once on the dormant grass and dirt. She knelt down at a chain-link fence surrounding the facility and pulled a pair of wire cutters from her backpack. After extending the handles and locking them into place she cut away half of the fence and folded it open before slipping through, putting the cutters into her backpack and resuming her climb.
As the hill leveled off and the grass and dirt turned to gravel paths and well-manicured trees, Dianne heard the engine grow louder. She crouched down next to a nearby bench and stared out into the ruins of the city, looking for the source of the sound. The sun’s rays were reaching farther across the city, their slender fingers of light gently peeling back the shadows and revealing the true extent of the devastation. Dianne scarcely had time to shake her head in awe at what lay below before she saw a flash of movement along the road near the parking garage where she stashed the truck.
A silver hatchback made its way down the street as Dianne watched, its small size allowing it to traverse the difficult terrain without resorting to pushing obstacles out of its way. Though Dianne was far enough from the vehicle that she didn’t think she would be seen she still flattened herself against the ground, peeking her head just high enough to watch the vehicle as it continued driving along. After several minutes of watching, Dianne realized that the car would be blocked from sight by a tall building in the next few seconds. She seized upon the opportunity and leapt up the instant the car was no longer visible. She turned and ran towards the LTAC, feet pounding across gravel, grass and pavement as she headed for the nearest doorway.
Dianne stopped at the front door and pulled a knife from her pocket. She flipped it around and pressed the base of the handle against the door, pushing with all of her strength until the glass door snapped under the pressure of the glass breaker and shattered. Dianne stepped in over the pile of glass, dropped to one knee and rapidly scanned the area, breathing a sigh of relief both at the fact that she was now completely out of sight of the car and that the room appeared to be empty. She slowly stood up, taking a closer look at her surroundings as she started to realize what type of a place she had walked into.
She stood in front of a welcome desk inside of a wraparound atrium that extended all the way around one side of the structure. The roof of the building was transparent and each of the floors above the ground level had open-air balconies that looked out onto the open space, affording the staff and residents a spectacular view not just of the outside of the building but of the inside as well. The exterior walls on the front appeared to be made completely of glass, though it was heavily coated with reflective film to the point that even the morning sunlight was just starting to illuminate the interior of the structure.
Couches, chairs, recliners and benches were scattered across the length and breadth of the bottom floor as far as Dianne could see. A café and a small restaurant stood near the side about halfway down the length of the building and a large grand piano sat off in the corner by itself, the lid still raised from the last time someone had played it. Dianne walked slowly through the rows of seats as she thought back to the times she had been in the hospital giving birth and she realized that the LTAC was hands down the nicest looking medical facility she had ever seen.
It looks more like a luxury spa than a hospital. Sarah’s explanation for what the place was—a cross between a hospital and a nursing home—crossed her mind again and she nodded in understanding. If you’re spending weeks or months here, you want it to be nice. Not only did the facility appear luxurious but she could tell by the architecture that it was modern, as well, and doubtless offered patients the latest in treatment methodologies.
Dianne’s footsteps echoed through the atrium as she walked along, speaking softly to herself in the wide, empty space. “So. If I were a bunch of powerful antibiotics, where would I be hiding?”
Chapter 10
International Space Station 2 (ISS-2)
Four Hours After the Event
Commander Palmer’s brow wrinkled as he stared through the viewport of the small reactor housed in one of the ISS-2’s habitats. An experimental small-scale fusion reactor, the device provided the station with more than enough power to run all of its systems twice over. The solar panels that the station periodically deployed were originally intended for use as the primary source of power, but the unparalleled success of the reactor meant that the solar panels had been relegated to act as an emergency power source.
That was, at least, until approximately two hours ago. Palmer scans the logs that Jackie Frey pulled from the reactor’s computer just before it went offline. The results are not pretty.
“This command has no source. How is that possible?” Palmer looks up at Jackie. “Is that even possible to do?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I guess it’s possible that ground control could have gotten in through a back door and initiated the power-down sequence but we lost communications a couple hours before the command was issued.”
“So then it had to come from on board the station?”
Jackie shrugs. “I don’t know. These records don’t seem like they tell the whole story.”
“What’d I miss?” Ted Wilkins floats into the reactor room and glances between Jackie and Commander Palmer.
Palmer tosses the printout through the air before turning to look through the viewport at the interior of the reactor chamber. “A power-down command was issued to the reactor around two hours ago. At the same time the solar panels were extended, almost like whoever issued the power-down command wanted it to go unnoticed.”
“Is that where the computer problems came from?”
Jackie shakes her head. “I thought so at first, but now… no. I don’t think so.”
Palmer is about to ask a question when a deep shudder runs through the length of the station. The groan of metal and crack of materials that should not be cracking while in space echoes through the room and the three astronauts look at each other with wide eyes. Several alarms go off a second later, each of them a different tone and frequency. The worse, by far, is accompanied by a bright orange light that flashes from the corner of each room in the station.
“We’re losing O2! Get your suits on now!” Commander Palmer doesn’t hesitate to bellow o
ut the order even as the station shakes again as it lurches to one side. Ted reaches out for a handhold on the wall and looks at it with a horrified expression.
“Did someone turn on the thrusters?”
Palmer kicks against the exterior of the reactor, pushing himself toward the nearest wall. He grabs hold, feeling the vibration of the station’s thrusters and shakes his head. “Negative. What’s going on here, some kind of computer glitch?” Before either Jackie or Ted can answer he waves them off. “It doesn’t matter; first we get in our suits then we’ll see what’s going on!”
The three astronauts sail through the rooms of the station, quickly reaching the area where their suits are stored. They crack open the back of the suits, step inside and the back seals automatically as they flex their muscles. A small green light illuminates at the bottom of their helmets’ heads-up displays to indicate that the seal is complete.
Ted, the first to get into his suit, is about to press a button on his left wrist display to connect the suit to the station’s computer system when Palmer grabs his right hand and pulls it away. “No!” Palmer says, looking at Ted and Jackie both. “If this is a computer glitch it could affect the suits, too. Don’t connect them to the station. We’ll do this all manually.”
The trio spend the next twenty minutes sweating—in spite of their suits’ on-board cooling systems—as they attempt to find out why the station’s thrusters started firing. The reason why is not forthcoming but the end result is soon discovered, though it generates more questions than answers.