Things Fall Down

by Keith Taylor

  McGuinness frowned, troubled by the lack of activity. This close to the coast the deck of a freighter would usually be swarming with dozens of sailors. Freight voyages were nothing but hurry up and wait. The crew could pretty much sleep their way across the ocean, but in the final few hours before making port there were a thousand jobs that needed to be done, all at the same time. It made no sense for the deck to be deserted right now.

  He waved his worries away as the King Stallion swooped in low to starboard, swinging around the freighter and pulling into a hover. The wind was high, almost at the mission safety limit, and this was no time to let his mind wander.

  Within moments of settling into position above the deck the call went up from the squad leader. Nylon ropes uncoiled from the chopper to the deck below, and in a cacophony of yelled orders the first four Marines clipped on and rappelled down. McGuinness felt the weight shift as their feet hit the deck, and he fought the stick as team one unclipped themselves from their lines and waved up for the next team. Team two rappelled down as soon as he steadied the Stallion, and team three jumped out almost before the second team cleared the landing zone.

  McGuinness was about to pull back on the stick when he heard a ruckus behind him, and he turned to see that there were still people in the bay. The civilian was clinging onto the open door, gripping on for dear life. He was attached to a rifleman, strapped into a tandem harness like a man-sized baby, and his terrified expression sent a chill all the way down the pilot’s spine.

  The man was frantic, gibbering with fear, his face locked in a wide-eyed rictus of terror. He’d looked pale and nervous from the moment he’d climbed aboard, but McGuinness had figured he just didn’t like flying.

  This was… this was something else. This wasn’t just fear. It wasn’t an irrational phobia. He didn’t know how, but from the look in his eyes McGuinness could tell that this man’s fears were real. There was something down there that… He didn’t want to think about it.

  Suddenly the rifleman let out a guttural roar right in the civilian’s face, and in shock the man let go of the door, trying to shield himself with his hands. The rifleman didn’t pass up the opportunity. He threw himself out of the Stallion backwards, dragging the terrified man along with him, and even over the sound of the rotors McGuinness could hear him screaming all the way down to the deck.

  “Jesus.” He let out a nervous laugh, trying to ignore the sense of dread he’d felt a moment ago. “I guess the guy doesn’t like heights.”

  Chen shook her head, chuckling. “I just hope he didn’t damage the door. If he left a scratch he’s swimming home.”

  McGuinness climbed to fifty meters above the deck off the port side to give himself a bird’s eye view as the three teams split up, each of them following a different path through the maze of containers, moving slowly towards the bridge. Even now the deck was silent and still. The Sikorsky had been hovering overhead for two minutes now, its thumping rotors deafening without ear protection, and a dozen heavily armed Marines had been on deck for one, but not a single crew member had so much as popped his head out the window to take a look. The lack of movement was eerie.

  Could it be abandoned? Was that the mission, to stop a ghost ship from plowing into the coast? Surely not. That would be a job for the Coast Guard. It’d be a waste to send a dozen Marines just to steer a ship out of danger. And besides, if the ship was abandoned there’d have been no need to fly under the radar, nor maintain radio silence.

  McGuinness looked back down at the deck, his curiosity piqued. His orders were to head directly back to base to refuel and return for the extraction, but he figured he could spare a couple of minutes to check out what was happening. He had plenty of fuel left for the return trip, and he could always put the hammer down and make up the lost time on the way back.

  He spoke in a crisp, clear voice into his headset. “Checking for structural damage,” he said, flipping a switch by the yoke. “Confirming bay door operation.”

  Behind him the door slid closed on rails, and when he heard a dull clunk he flipped the switch again. “Reconfirming.” If anyone following the mission back at base wondered why he was hanging around he wanted to leave a believable excuse on the flight recorder. Nobody could blame him for making sure that the civilian hadn’t damaged the door with his little tantrum.

  He turned to Chen and grinned. “Can you get back there and give me visual confirmation of lock?”

  Chen laughed. She knew exactly what was going on, but she decided to play along. She covered her mic with one hand as she climbed out of her seat. “Jackass.”

  McGuinness grinned mischievously and looked back down to the deck, where team two was about to reach the end of the containers, moving down the center of the deck in a channel between the looming stacks. He watched as they reached the equipment he’d spotted on his approach, and even fifty meters above the deck he could see that there was something wrong. Whatever it was, the team wasn’t pleased to find it there. The four Marines took up defensive positions around the steel frame and the team leader spoke into the radio on the secure channel. His calm, professional voice seemed to carry just an edge of fear.

  “Looks like it’s been armed,” he said, his voice almost drowned out by an odd, crackling interference. “Please advise.”

  “Hold your position, he’s coming to you,” came the response from the leader of team one.

  As McGuinness watched the two remaining teams converge on the frame. Team one moved cautiously through the containers, but team three hustled the civilian across the deck at a near sprint towards the mystery equipment. It was clear from above that the team had abandoned their usual careful formation. There was no attempt to remain covert, to move from cover to cover. This was a dead run, out in the open across the deck. The civilian seemed unwilling or unable to keep up, and before long two men flanked him and each grabbed an arm, dragging him across the deck like a sack of potatoes.

  Team two were yelling by the time the civilian reached them, alarmed, jabbing their fingers towards the frame. Their professional decorum had all but vanished by the time the scrawny civilian was dumped beside the equipment, obviously scared and out of breath. Now the entire squad took up a protective stance around him, and he was prodded into action by a rifleman, seemingly at gunpoint.

  “The door’s fine, your highness,” Chen smirked, climbing back into her seat. “What’s going on down there?”

  McGuinness shrugged. “Not a clue. Some kind of drama. Looks like their boy’s about to wet his pants.”

  On deck the civilian hurried around the frame, reaching up and crouching down, inspecting whatever it was with what appeared to be terror. After a moment he pulled a screwdriver from his pocket and set to work on a panel. The Marines hovered around, looking over their shoulders at the man, their attention split between protecting him and watching what he was doing.

  Suddenly, without warning, the man dropped his screwdriver, turned away from the frame and bolted. It looked like he was trying to escape, though it was unclear to where.

  “What the hell?” Chen exclaimed, but there was no longer any humor in her voice.

  Once again McGuinness felt a wave of dread pass through him. Suddenly the idea of returning to base seemed appealing. It was only when he gripped the yoke that he realized his palms were sweating, despite the chill in the cockpit.

  Down on deck a couple of Marines grabbed hold of the fleeing civilian and dragged him back, his feet barely touching the ground. The civilian was panicked, out of control, struggling to wriggle from their grip, and it was clear that his fear was spreading. In the cockpit McGuinness felt his sense of apprehension double. It was unnerving to see a frightened Marine.

  Eventually, after a long argument that ended with a left hook that knocked the civilian to the ground, the leader of team one raised his radio, looked up to the Sikorsky and waved an arm frantically.

  “Air support, move well clear. I repeat, move well clear immedi—”

&nbs
p; There was a flash.

  In the same fraction of a second the Marines, the civilian, the freighter, McGuinness, Chen and the Sikorsky were vaporized, rent apart to their constituent elements in a white hot instant.

  There was nobody alive within fifty miles to witness the explosion, but had anyone been watching they’d have seen a depression open in the ocean for a second, an inverted dome of flash-boiled water forced down around the vaporized freighter. A moment later – unseen, in the blink of an eye – the dome collapsed in on itself as the water rushed back with a vengeance. A torrent erupted from the surface like a volcanic blast, a rolling, boiling, deafening storm of white water and steam that after just a few seconds loomed three thousand feet over the ocean’s surface, and still climbing. Silent lighting bolts flashed within the cloud as it cast a dark shadow over the swirling ocean.

  An hour after the explosion, two hundred miles to the east, surfers paddling out from Huntington Beach were excited to see a brief wave train approach the shore. Four waves in quick succession crested five feet higher than most they’d seen so far that day, and the surfers didn’t miss the opportunity as the waves curled and broke on the sand.

  As they happily rode the surf they had no way of knowing that they were the first surviving civilians to feel the effects of the first ever nuclear attack on the United States.

  ΅

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CONDITION BLACK

  DOCTOR CESAR RAMOS stared open mouthed at the list in his hands, willing the words to rearrange themselves into something a little less horrifying. He flipped each of the three pages over to check their reverse, then carefully picked at the edges to make sure that there weren’t several sheets stuck together. But no. There really were only three pages.

  One hundred seventeen patients. Out of four hundred fifty six inpatients at Saint Francis only a little more than a hundred had been whitelisted for evacuation. The rest were to be left behind to suffer their fate, whatever the hell that may be. They wouldn’t even be informed that there was an evacuation, in order to – as the people in charge had sternly told him – preserve order. As soon as the military had rolled in the evacuees had been quietly moved down to the trucks, and the wards abandoned.

  Ramos set down the pages and picked up the much larger sheaf of documents beside it. This was the inventory of equipment, instruments and medication that had been slated for evacuation, and it ran to eighteen pages. Sick people could be abandoned, but it was apparently vitally important that the Daya textured corneal manipulators (x8) and the Parkes extra coarse rasps (x13) be loaded onto trucks and evacuated to safety, just in case someone in the safe zone needed cataract surgery or an emergency nose job. It was insane. There was no other way to put it. Whoever had ordered this had lost their damned mind.

  Ramos rolled up the pages and stuffed them in the pocket of his lab coat, then he took a deep breath and left his quiet office to rejoin the madness of the corridors outside. Nurses were running at a near sprint through the halls, juggling a dozen jobs and the two dozen orders that were coming from both their own superiors and the national guardsmen who’d occupied the ER and taken command of the hospital. Orderlies and cleaning staff were heaving overloaded racks of equipment to the service elevators, ferrying them back and forth from the store rooms to the covered trucks waiting outside in the ambulance bays. It was chaos.

  As for Ramos… well, nobody needed a radiologist right now. The ER had closed to new admissions a half hour ago when Condition Black had been officially declared, and most of the vital equipment in his department had already been packed up and moved downstairs. For now, at least, he was surplus to requirements.

  He pulled out his phone and scowled once again at the screen. He’d been trying to call Jack for twenty minutes, but there had been no bars since the moment the military barged in through the ER doors. He didn’t even know what he planned to say if he could get through to him, apart from ‘Hurry the hell up.’ Nobody had been able to explain why Condition Black had been called, or what the hell was going on in the city.

  Ramos scanned the corridor until he spotted someone who looked like he may be in charge. A soldier in fatigues with a shaved head and time-worn lines in his face was looming over the second floor admissions desk, harrying a stressed out nurse who was pulling charts from file cabinets too slowly for his liking. Ramos tapped him meekly on the shoulder, taking a quick step back as the soldier shot him a sharp look, furious at the interruption.

  “Excuse me, umm…” He looked at the insignia on the soldier’s shoulder, but he had no idea what rank it denoted.

  “Sergeant,” the man prompted, impatiently.

  “Thank you. Sergeant, we need to talk about this list.” Ramos pulled the patient evacuation list from his pocket and flattened it out on the desk. “This can’t be the whole thing. We’re missing people who could be easily evacuated. I’ve got a woman up on three who—”

  The sergeant cut him off with a dismissive wave. “I’m sorry, doctor, but I’m not in charge of who stays and who goes. I have my orders and you have yours. Now we’re expected to carry them out quickly and efficiently. Please, return to your duties.”

  “But you don’t understand!” Ramos protested. Again the sergeant shot him a warning look. Ramos took a careful step back, as if he were trying to calm a dangerous dog after straying onto its territory. “Sorry. Look, I have a patient upstairs, Karen Archer? She was admitted just a couple hours ago with minor injuries, but according to this list she’s to be left behind. There has to be some kind of mistake.”

  The sergeant scowled, frustrated by Ramos’ pestering, but he reluctantly pulled a bundle of papers from within his jacket and ran a finger down the front page. He shook his head. “I’m not seeing any patients here by the name of Archer.”

  Ramos was confused for a moment, then his mistake occurred to him. “Try Keane. Karen Keane. She might have been admitted under her maiden name.”

  Once again the sergeant scowled, flipping the pages until he reached the K section. “OK, she’s here. Karen Keane. Bruised ribs, lacerations, concussion. Says here she’s being treated with IV Caldolor, dosage of three bags per day at eight hour intervals to continue at least 72 hours post admission. I’m sorry, doctor, but we’re not taking any patients who require ongoing pain management.”

  Ramos couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Who in God’s name wrote these rules? Caldolor is ibuprofen. It’s literally nothing but Advil in a saline solution! It was only administered so the hospital can bill her insurance company $100 a bag! Look, I can take her off it right now if it gets her on the list.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “I’m sorry, but like I said I’m not in charge of deciding who gets on those trucks, and I can’t make any exceptions. The list is final. If you have a complaint you can take it up with my superior.”

  “OK, I will. Where can I find him?”

  “He’s at the safe zone. I’ll see to it that you get to lodge your complaint the moment we roll through the gates, but right now I need you downstairs and in a truck, understand?” He noticed the doctor’s name tag, and glanced down at his papers. “Ramos. You’re the chief radiologist? You’re a priority one evacuee. What are you still doing here? You should have been on a truck fifteen minutes ago.”

  Ramos shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere without my patient, sergeant. You’re asking me to leave a perfectly healthy woman to die!”

  The sergeant slammed a binder down onto the desk, rounding on Ramos angrily. “Damn it, doctor, I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m ordering you to get out of my face! I don’t have time for your complaints, and as long as we’re operating under Condition Black you come under my direct command!”

  He looked over Ramos’ shoulder and beckoned someone behind the doctor. “Private, please escort this man down to the ambulance bay, and make sure he gets on one of the trucks.”

  “Yessir.” The young private took Ramos firmly by the arm and led him away from the ser
geant, who immediately started yelling at the nurse again.

  Ramos allowed himself to be pulled, shell-shocked by the encounter. He knew military types could be rigid and hardheaded, but he had no idea how anyone could be so damned obtuse when the solution to the problem was so obvious. Karen was clearly healthy. She could be loaded onto a truck right this second without any more treatment. It just didn’t make sense to follow a piece of paper rather than common sense.

  They reached the service elevator at the far end of the corridor, and as the private hit the call button Ramos glanced back at the desk. The sergeant was striding away in the direction of the staircase, his hands full of files. Ramos was about to open his mouth just as the doors opened, but before he could say a word he was bundled inside. The private reached out to hit the button for the ground floor, and Ramos grabbed his sleeve.

  “Wait a minute,” he implored, snatching his hand away from the soldier’s arm when the private shot him a warning glare. “Look, I just need to get to the third floor to help a patient. Can you just do me a favor and pretend you delivered me to the trucks?”

  The private smoothed out his sleeve and hit the button. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have my orders.” The doors closed, and the elevator juddered and began to move down.

  Ramos felt his heart pound in his chest. The service elevator was slow, but even so he knew he only had a few seconds before the doors opened onto the chaos of the ground floor, and he knew the private would be locked in to his decision once he was among his fellow soldiers. He couldn’t disobey an order where people might catch him in the act.

  Ramos fumbled at his wrist. “Look, private. This is a Breitling Colt Skyracer, the 2018 model. $1,600 retail. You can easily flip it for $1,000 on eBay.” He held out the watch by its black band. “All you have to do is press the button for the third floor and look the other way, and it’s yours.” The private looked down at the watch, and his eyes flicked to the row of buttons on the wall. Ramos shook the watch. “Come on, man. I know they don’t pay you guys half what you’re worth. Help me out and make a little money. You know what to do.”