by S A Ison
Kalvin knew better. Not hearing about it didn’t mean he’d stop, but he’d keep it quieter. Kalvin figured one of these days he’d see something in the newspapers about some poor girl gone missing or found dead. He’d done what he could.
“Okay, let’s go see what we can find,” Kalvin said, getting his mind back on business.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Maryville, MO, 23 March 2019
The outdoor oven was coming along nicely. Sayer had come by early to make a start. Pike had gathered in the supplies over several weeks, not wanting to spend a lot of money at one time. Though he was making it fine paycheck to paycheck, the modifications to the cabin and property were putting a strain on their wallets. Pike wanted to be cautious with their money and not overspend.
He and Margo footed most of the bills since, if nothing happened, they’d be the ones to profit. The thought of Margo made his heart skip. They’d become intimate over the last few weeks. He’d even gone so far as to move into her bedroom, the master suite. They were still a little shy, but it was building and becoming more powerful. He was also looking for an engagement ring.
He knew he was probably rushing it, but he thought perhaps he’d get the ring now and then, when he felt the time was right, ask her to marry him. He wasn’t in a hurry per se, but he did love her and wanted her to be his. He was old-fashioned that way.
He’d seen Joy’s smiles and had blushed badly. Sayer had slapped him on the back. “You two make a great team and an even better couple. I’m happy for you, man.”
Now he and Sayer were sitting in the camp chairs drinking beer. “I was trying to think about what we can do for perimeter early warning systems,” Pike said, wiping the sweat from his brow.
“Well, we can use fishing line with some kind of small explosive device but if a deer trips it, or you or Margo, that won’t be any fun. Plus, if a neighbor sets it off, then you might be looking at a lawsuit. But post-apocalyptic, all bets are off.” Sayer laughed, looking over at the women, who were working in the garden. He nodded at them. “They sure are working hard.”
“Yeah. Margo wants to get the garden ready for planting. Some of the seedlings are getting really big, so will need transplanting soon. It is really warming up this spring. I even had to shave my beard.” He laughed, his hand going to his freshly shaved face. “I also went dumpster diving and got quite a few windows that had been thrown out at a building site. They’re in the barn now. I’m planning on building Margo a greenhouse from them. The seedlings are starting to take over the house. I got a couple designs off the internet, so I’m just trying to figure out what is the best way to go.”
“Something simple and straightforward, I’d say. We can come up on the weekends to help weed and take care of it. You guys shouldn’t have it all on your shoulders,” Sayer suggested.
“Sounds good. She’s planning on a huge garden. I think we’ll be eating good. Especially if everything grows well,” Pike said, taking another sip.
They had started vegetable seeds in February and set them by the large living room window that caught the southern sun. It was usually Binx’s spot, but he’d been usurped by the metal shelving unit that held all the seedlings. They’d used the worm casting and the seedlings had shot up.
They carefully rolled the rack out on warm sunny days, like today. It was sixty-six out and quite pleasant. It had been a relatively mild winter, so they’d wanted to start as soon as possible. Both were excited, and measured the seedlings each morning.
“Well, this ain’t gettin' it done,” Sayer said, and got up and returned to the oven.
Pike went over to the garden. “What do you think, Joy? Think we can grow some veggies here?”
“I’d say. Between the chicken poo and those worms you planted last year, this soil is rich and should produce a bumper crop of whatever you decide to grow. I was telling Margo she might want to start another set of seeds, extend her growing season and get more out of this summer.”
“I think that’s a great idea. I had planned that I’d staggered the garden by three weeks, but I might as well start another set now. Once we’re finished out here, we’ll go in and start setting up more seeds. That rack is going to be almost impossible to move,” Margo laughed.
“Maybe I should get started on that greenhouse sooner than later,” Pike said, going over to kiss Margo on the cheek. “I’ll swing by the hardware store once we’re finished with the brick oven and pick up another rack. We can put them side by side.” He headed back to Sayer, who was mixing up more mortar.
Moscow, Russia, 12 April 2019
Alexei Borin stood in front of the mirror, readjusting his tie. He was in a celebratory mood and smiled at his reflection, a smug, self-satisfied smile.
Dina watched his face closely from her vantage point on the bed. “Alexei, darling, you look as the cat does when he’s found a mouse.”
“My dear, I am just that happy.” He came to sit on the side of the bed. She placed her hand on his chest and could feel his heart racing. He looked at his watch; he’d done that several times already tonight. What is going on?
He looked down at her with adoring eyes. She could see the lust still lingering.
She nudged him, giggling. “So, why so happy? You almost glow with it. Tell me, Lexei.” She ran her fingers up his chest and into his hair.
“I have a little celebrating to do, my dear. It will dawn a new day for Russia and the world,” he said importantly.
Dina sat up and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately. “Well, tell me, darling, what are we celebrating?”
His eyes caressed her face, softening. “As we speak, our assets have deployed and are now making their way to the continental United States. In about one hour, seven POSEIDON missiles will be deployed. They are small and fast, my dear, and best of all, they are artificial intelligence. They’ve been programed by Volkov’s best man and are on their way to detonate one mile out from Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, Washington, two off California and one over the skies of Texas. That particular one is a lower yield. It will disrupt their electrical grid and infrastructure. The United States will be no longer. What doesn’t destroy them will slowly kill them,” he crowed in glee.
“My God, what have you done, Alexei? The rest of the world will not stand for it!” Dina cried, pulling back from him.
Borin looked at her face, his head turned this way and that. “What? You do not approve? I thought you were a true patriot. Do you like the American dogs so much?”
“Lexei,” she said, using his pet name once more, “I worry for our country. Will NATO not retaliate?” She made her eyes large and filled them with fear. He watched her face, studied it carefully. She felt his eyes boring into her soul and tried not to flinch.
“What can they do?” he said, getting up. “It will be done, and really, who knows who did it? Even if they guess, we now have the ability to wipe out any nation who stands against us.” She could see he was upset, his mood spoiled by her outburst.
“I must leave, my dear. I must talk to Vladimir. He will be wanting an update.” He headed for the door, then turned to look back at her. “I will see you tomorrow.”
When he was gone, Dina sat where she was, stunned. One hour? How could she get word to her contact? How had they done this without word leaking out? She’d failed. Failed her mission. She had to break protocol and get word to her handler. It was just after 11 pm. Would that be enough time to get word to the U.S.? She had to try. She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t. How fast were those torpedoes? How long after launching would they detonate?
She jumped from the bed and began to dress. She’d have to drive like a maniac to Nikolskaya Street, normally a twenty-minute drive. She hoped that, at the late hour, it would only be ten minutes. She got to the door, keys in hand, and looked around her apartment. She may not come back. Once at the safehouse, they may keep her.
It couldn’t be helped. She needed to tell someone, and fast. She opene
d the door and her heart went into her throat. Alexei Borin was standing before her, large body blocking the doorway, his face a rictus of rage, his body vibrating with anger.
“Where do you go, Dina my dear?” He said dear with a guttural growl.
“I, I was hungry. I thought I’d go out and grab something.” She forced herself to breathe, her heart hammering in her chest.
Borin’s face nearly went purple. “I don’t think you will go anywhere, my dear. Except with me.” He grabbed her arm and led her to his vehicle.
҉
Six POSEIDON torpedoes screamed their way toward the continental United States, their streamlined bodies – so small that neither satellites nor the extensive SOSUS array could not detect them – cutting through the water with ease as they stealthily followed the topography of the ocean floor. The oceans are vast and the deadly torpedoes smaller than many of fish that inhabit the waters.
The Russian subs had been given orders to run silent and deep, to discharge their payloads and beat a hasty retreat. The underwater detonations would carry the shockwave for an incredible distance, and anything nearby would be destroyed.
The POSEIDON torpedoes were programed to arrive at their destinations and detonate simultaneously. Some therefore swam faster than others to maintain the timeline. That was the brilliance of AI: point and fire and let the robot do the rest. There would be no warning except for the detonation over Texas.
The brilliant part of that plan had been to employ a terminally ill pilot willing to sacrifice himself so that his family would be in rich comfort for the rest of their lives. It was difficult to turn down that kind of assignment and Viktor Duboff had proudly volunteered. The forty-eight-year-old had liver cancer and maybe six months left. His four young children would be well taken care of.
At 6 pm EST and 3 pm PST, six POSEIDON nuclear torpedoes exploded, each one mile off the coastline of the continental United States. The massive explosions sucked in all the surrounding air, depriving living beings along the coastlines of air to breath.
In St. Marys, NC, Beverly and Johnny were standing by their cars. They’d just come to the end of another long day and were shooting the breeze when, all of a sudden, the air was sucked out of their lungs.
Beverly’s eyes bulged with panic and fear. Johnny’s face went a brilliant red, his eyes wide and wild. She had no clue what had happened, but just before she and Johnny were obliterated into dust and molecules, a small part of her brain told her Pike had been right.
The tremendous blast vaporized the water, air and living tissue of everything fifteen miles inland in less than a millisecond. There was matter, then there was nothing. The blast radius grew, onward and upward, destroying everything in its path for thirty-five miles. Buildings exploded into trillions of pieces. Living things were eradicated. Beneath the surface of the water the shoreline was obliterated, rock, soil, and living matter all gone.
The shockwave continued on out to seventy miles. Trees and buildings collapsed and exploded, people are thrown down, their eardrums bursting from the increased air pressure. Their capillaries burst, blood vessels collapse, organs burst. Before they died, they suffered internal hemorrhaging and their brains swelled from the shockwave that hammered at them. The pain was excruciating before death finally took them.
At the blast sites, irradiated water flowed back into the vast deep pockets in the bedrock. The initial blasts cause a significant tectonic shift, and the aftershocks continue. The Earth’s axis moves by fourteen inches. This is more than the 2011 earthquake in Japan, which shifted the axis roughly six and a half inches. The planet is changed forever.
Several hundred miles away, the Earth trembles. Seismographs rock violently, their zigzagging needles tell the scientists that something bad has happened.
The pilot Duboff sends his payload into the heavens moments before he is shot down by a US fighter out of Anchorage. His payload explodes over Texas some time later, making worse the devastation of the United States below.
Maryville, MO, 12 April 2019
Pike wiped the sweat from his brow. He and Margo were in the garden, making neat rows in preparation for planting the following week. The weather was warming up quickly and the seedlings were out of control. The living room was a jungle and Binx was disgruntled.
Beneath Pike, the ground shook. He heard a low-pitched rumble. He squatted down and placed his ear to the ground.
“Margo, lay down and listen,” he said. She did, laying her head next to his. He grinned. They lay there for a few moments. The ground didn’t stop shaking, and neither did the rumble abate. The hair on his arms rose and he looked at Binx, whose ears were back.
Then there was a tremendous flash, like a wild lightning storm, in the clear early evening sky. “Shit! I think it is happening! Grab Binx. Let’s get inside and put up the plastic. Find your cellphone and I’ll get mine. Turn on the TV.”
Adrenaline pumping, Pike jumped up. His legs suddenly became weak and heavy. He stumbled, and Margo caught him. He looked at her face and saw his own fear reflected there. He wanted to cry, but a numbness crept over him.
They ran into the house, shut the windows, got the cellphones and tried to turn them on. Nothing. They tried the TV. Nothing. The lights in the house remained on. Next, they checked their laptops. Nothing.
“It’s happened,” Pike said, his voice shaking badly. “Let’s get the plastic up and make sure we seal it well. Any fallout should stay out.”
They grabbed the heavy plastic, rolled it out, and attached the sections they’d prepared over each window, the front door, the back door and the fireplace.
Then it hit Pike. The faraday cage had worked! He looked at Margo and grinned stupidly.
“What?” she asked, her voice trembling. She was nearly hyperventilating.
“We still have power,” Pike said, his heart rate starting to return to normal. “The faraday cage actually worked. We will have power. One part of our planning has gone well. Now, hopefully, Sayer and Joy will be here soon. Let’s start taking our iodide tablets, start the series for the next two weeks.”
Binx continued to whine, his small body trembling. Pike bent and picked up the dog, petting him and comforting him. He slid an arm around Margo and pulled her to him. Buried his face in her neck and kissed her. “Breathe. Just breathe. We’re alive. So far, things are as we thought they might be. We don’t know if it was POSEIDON or something else, but that doesn’t matter. We are prepared. We did what we knew we had to, honey. We’re safe for now. Once Sayer and Joy get here, we’ll hunker down and see what happens.
“I’ll go out once a day, wear my rain gear, and check on the chickens, feed and water them. We keep our heads down and keep our weapons on us now. We go nowhere without them.”
“Okay, Pike. I want to cry but I’m too afraid to cry. I know I’m being foolish.”
“No baby, you aren’t. I’m afraid too. But we’ve done everything we could. We’re safe, we have shelter, food, water, and most important, we have each other. Whatever happens, I’ll protect you. I swear. We will get through this together, honey. I have you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
12 April 2019
The oceans begin to pull, sucked into the vacuum created by the explosion. The water roils and turns in on itself like a rising beast, like the Greek god Poseidon. The waves rise and crest, the water dead and irradiated, all life within its depths destroyed.
Poseidon’s vengeance rises high, but not as high as the Russian’s hoped. But that didn’t matter. Life along the coastlines for seventy miles is gone, a blasted wasteland torn apart by the shockwave, the heat and the radiation. One hundred miles out, all living things are irradiated, the radioactive isotopes attaching themselves to each cell in the organisms’ bodies.
Two hundred miles out, radiation creeps along like a killing fog, the prevailing winds carrying it beyond the blast zone. Transformer boxes on poles explode and catch fire. Cars are shredded. People run, screaming, panicked. Everything,
phones, cars, all has stopped. Airplanes fall from the sky, thousands plunging to their deaths. If one could stop to watch, one could almost hear their screams on the way down.
Water, deep green and black, rushes over the devastated ground, bodies – human and animal alike – floating on it. The flood waters surge on and on, gathering in small eddies here and there, depositing unrecognizable red foamy bits and pieces. Most of the debris is small, like ingredients in a soup.
The water pushes on, carrying radiation with it. Washington, D.C. is no more. Not a tree, not a monument, not a bridge. Nubby protrusions in the ground remain. Water surges in.
All along the entire east and west coastlines it is the same: boiling irradiated water, pushing inland. Tremors move the land. Farther inland, there are signs of life, but most will soon perish painfully. The lucky ones are those who never felt a thing.
Those on the bitter edge, they suffer the most, feeling the blast and radiation before drowning.
The dead ocean waters spill into rivers, ponds, and lakes. Complete ecosystems are destroyed, neutralized, and poisoned. Contamination permeates the breathable air, the blast sending the radioactive isotopes far up into the atmosphere where it rides on the currents of the air.
Now the dead ocean begins to recede, dragging with it rubble and ash. The ocean currents pick up the radioactive water and move it along, distributing it across the world.
Poseidon has taken it vengeance Nothing survives the devastation.
Lincoln, NE, 12 April 2019
Sayer and Joy were out in the barn feeding the goats. The goats began to cry and went to their knees. It was then that Sayer felt the tremor; the rumbling worked its way through his feet and up into his body. Felt it, heard it. He looked over to Joy, and she at him. Her mouth trembled and her eyes filled with tears.