by B. V. Larson
The weapon streaked into the sky, and Bjorn’s eyes followed it. His mouth hung open. More missiles rose up after the first. The light was shocking in the dim night and the roar was deafening. Most of the launches came from miles away out to the east, presumably from other subs in the distance.
Bjorn couldn’t believe his misfortune. The subs would probably attract return fire. He was in the middle of a battle, and if his hunch was right, those blue streaks bearing down out of space were missiles as well. He was standing far too close to ground zero for comfort.
He looked this way and that, seeking shelter. There was precious little to be had, and precious little time to seek it. He crossed the three cabins off his list immediately. Any serious blast would destroy them. There were no cellars under any of the buildings, either.
As he saw it, he had very few options. He could dive into the ocean and swim downward, but that might mean certain death. He had no idea how long he might have to wait, holding his breath down there. The exchange appeared to be minutes away, but it was hard to be sure. He could drown waiting for it, or possibly be forced to surface just as the warheads went off.
Just as bad, the water might not save him anyway. When the shockwaves rolled out over the ocean, they would kill every fish in the water, crushing their brains inside their skulls and rupturing their eyes…
His eyes swept the island, which was no more than two hundred feet long in total. The scene, once as tranquil and perfect as he’d ever laid eyes upon, was now lit up with glaring lights that bloomed overhead, filtering down through the rustling palms. From his position, it looked as if the grand finale of a fireworks display had been set off directly above the island.
There were only two structures on the island other than the three cabins. One was the water catch-basin system. The other was the outhouse.
Bjorn’s eyes fixated on this last. It had to be.
Never having been a squeamish man nor one who was fraught with indecision, he sprinted to the outhouse door and ripped it half off the hinges. He tore the cracked wooden seat away. The hole exposed beneath was as black as a tomb.
He vaulted inside, feet first. He landed with surprisingly little squelching about a dozen feet down. He’d only used the thing a few times. The bottom was slick with brine and tainted with waste water. It stank, but he hardly cared now.
Bjorn crouched down there less than a minute before the world cracked open outside and a brilliant light more intense than anything he’d ever seen shone down through the opening. It was a pure white, like that produced by an arc-welder. He wondered if he would be burned by this burst of energy, which was like a thousand suns.
Strangely, there was no sound at first, just that shock of white light. Then the illumination changed and faded to a lurid roiling red. Still, there was no sound.
Bjorn had studied such things. He’d worked for enough governments and taken field courses in survival under every conceivable situation. This one was not one of the better ones, as he recalled. The blasts had to have been thermonuclear to cause such a bright, distant flash. It had to be a fusion bomb—an H-bomb. He knew it was far from over. The worst was yet to come.
Light travels much faster than sound. That’s why the flash seemed silent at first. The megatons of force released initially sent out massive pulses of light and particle radiation, which was soon followed up by a concussive blast wave of high-pressure air. Depending on how close the strike was, he was either in for a rough time or instantaneous death. He wasn’t quite sure which was preferable and had no idea if the nanites in his body could repair cellular damage from radiation burns.
Fortunately he didn’t have long to wait. More bursting flares of light appeared in the hole above. There were so many he could not count them. Some were dimmer than others, indicating they were far off. Others appeared to be close and blindingly bright. They all left purple afterimages on his retina, but he found he didn’t want to close his eyes. He wanted to die with them open.
When the first shockwave hit the island, he was surprised by the suddenness of it. The calm night went from relative silence to a deafening howl of wind in less than a second. Trees went down, and the outhouse over his head was blown clear off the island and tumbled over the water toward the mainland. It lifted up into the air where it twirled and crashed. He could hear it flying end over end and breaking into pieces.
He crouched at the bottom of his stinking hole and placed his palms flat over his ears and opened his mouth. Putting his fingers into his ears would have been a mistake; he’d learned that when dealing with artillery blasts. With a tight seal in the ear canal, the air pressure difference could pop a man’s eardrums.
The flashes and the blasts went on for more than a minute. The bursts seemed to be high up in the atmosphere, fortunately for him. There were no tidal waves or fireballs hitting him directly. He had time to wonder what the clouds of radioactive isotopes would do, and where on the Earth they would fall and settle at last.
When the barrage was over at last, he climbed up onto the surface of the island again. Many of the trees were damaged, but none of them were on fire. Of the three cabins on the island, only one was left standing.
Bjorn walked to the sea and stood in the ankle deep water. The night had become still again, as suddenly as it had been disrupted. The tremendous explosions had ceased.
He waded around the island, noting the water was warmer than it had been. Something thumped against his leg, and he crouched to examine it. The corpse of a yellow jack floated in the waves. He picked up the fish and examined it. He wasn’t sure what had killed the creature, but he was sure these were good to eat. He circled the island twice, wading out and scooping with his hands. Within twenty minutes, he had seven of the fish on the shore. A small school must have been swimming by his island when the war in the heavens had reached down and struck them dead.
He toasted one up in the fire pit and ate it, sitting on the fallen trunk of a snapped-off palm. Radioactive or not, the meat was fresh and good.
-5-
Most men would have fled the island after experiencing Armageddon in the middle of the night. The stress and worry would have gotten to them. They would have been too nervous to fall sleep again, or at least too busy watching the skies, waiting for the spacecraft in the heavens above to drop the second proverbial shoe.
But if Bjorn was anything, he was unusual. He didn’t worry about the war overly much. He knew it was being fought nearby, but that didn’t change his decision to ride it out right here on his forgotten little scrap of land. In fact, he reasoned that he’d just become considerably more uninteresting to those who had been searching for him.
He decided to stay put. He arrived at this decision with characteristically sound logic: First, he thought it was unlikely there would be another missile strike that would come closer than the one that he’d just ridden out. In case there was one coming, in the morning he would dig a superior bunker in the middle of the island, shoring it up with wood from the fallen trees and collapsed cabins. Second, this island had now become a haven that was very unlikely to be invaded by the spooks who were seeking him. Even if they had been scouring the Keys, they now had bigger things to worry about.
Bjorn came to the conclusion that the nuclear exchange he’d witnessed in the night had furthered his goals. All he wanted was to be left alone, to be left out of this fight. And who in their right minds would come out here after him now?
But Bjorn was wrong about his seclusion having been enhanced. Two quiet days passed, and then visitors arrived on what he was already coming to think of as his island.
They came just after dawn. The night had been a colorful one, as the skies overhead had given him another distant light show. Apparently, the Macro cruisers had finally arrived, having followed their shower of missiles to Earth. They’d parked themselves near Andros Island. Bjorn wasn’t sure if they were bombarding Star Force or not, but there were flashes of light in the distance to the east, and occasionally
aircraft cruised overhead. The planes were particularly annoying, as they were military craft and the ban on sonic booms had been lifted in this region. The pilots seemed to enjoy creating thunder in the skies as their planes broke the sound barrier.
It was just after dawn when Bjorn’s eyes snapped open. For a split-second, he wondered what had awakened him—then he heard it: the unmistakable buzzing of an outboard motor.
He launched himself to his feet and headed for the only section of the island where the foliage was still dense and green. He crouched there in the shade of mangroves and palms, looking out to sea with intense eyes.
There were four of them. Regular Marines, U. S. personnel. He narrowed his eyes, and read what he could from their behavior.
They didn’t look like they were planning an assault. They had stripped down to their tee shirts and dog tags. They kept their helmets on, and their rifles slung, but they were merely talking, rather than grim-faced and determined. When they came onto the island with splashing boots, they were looking around but did not appear concerned for their safety.
Bjorn read the situation, and figured that if they were looking for him, they didn’t actually expect to find him. Perhaps they’d been checking countless islands for days. Or possibly they didn’t know he existed and were pursuing some other kind of mission.
He decided to remain hidden and see what they would do. From the green gloom of his foliage, he watched as they unfolded some kind of transceiver and buried it, with an antenna sticking up, in the middle of the island. Then they turned and went back to their boat.
This was too much. He didn’t want this thing on his island. He would have to leave, and he’d already spent too much time arranging this place to his liking.
When none of them were looking, he sprinted down the sandy strip of land that served as a western shore. When he was about twenty feet from their craft, where they laughed and talked and pointed out to sea, discussing their next move, Bjorn hailed them. He had his pistol tucked in his waistband at the small of his back.
“Hey!” he shouted. “What are you guys doing on my land?”
The startled marines fell silent. They all turned together, staring at him in surprise.
“Sorry, sir,” one said. He had a corporal’s stripes on his shirt, which he hastened to shrug on. “Sorry. We didn’t know anyone was on this rock.”
“No problem,” Bjorn said, pasting on a smile. “Could you tell me what you’re doing, or is it top secret?”
The men glanced at one another. The corporal shrugged and walked up the shore to meet Bjorn, who was already calculating his next move.
Bjorn had never gotten along terribly well with regular troops, and he was distrustful of them now. He went over in his mind, as the corporal approached, just how he could kill the man in the most efficient manner possible. Really, the first man wasn’t the problem. He was certain he could strike him dead or at least unconscious with a single blow.
It was the rest of the team that concerned him. They had rifles on their backs, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t spring into their midst and put them all down before they managed to get off a few rounds. In most cases, a single gunshot wound would not stop Bjorn, but a lucky shot to the head might do just that.
Even if they didn’t kill him, they could injure him seriously. Recovery could take days. Bjorn wasn’t interested in enduring that unless it was absolutely necessary. He also knew that once he got rid of this team another would come after them trying to figure out the disappearance.
Military people could be like a trail of ants: once you squished one the rest went crazy and they never stopped coming at you.
Accordingly he didn’t draw his gun, or crush the corporal’s windpipe. Instead, he stood there motionless, forcing himself to smile.
“You okay, man?” the corporal asked. “You look…burned.”
Bjorn blinked, then nodded. “Yeah, I probably do. I was out here a few nights ago when the sky lit up.”
“Holy shit!” the marine said with real feeling. “You should get to a hospital or something.”
“I will soon,” Bjorn promised. “But could you tell me what kind of device you placed in the middle of my island? It’s not some kind of mine, is it?”
Bjorn knew what a mine looked like, and he knew this wasn’t one, but he figured the marine would be more forthcoming if he was reassuring a civilian.
“No, no,” said the corporal. “It’s not dangerous. It’s a sensory device. It’s a magnetometer, actually. If anything big and metal comes near, it will warn us.”
Bjorn frowned. “Big? Metal? Like what, a ship?”
“Not that big. You couldn’t get a deep draft ship close to this island anyway. It’s too shallow. No, we’re detecting machines—you know, robots. Hey, listen, if you want a ride back to the main island, we can take you now. We have orders to pick up civvies in need.”
Bjorn shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m all right.”
The corporal clearly didn’t believe him, but he shrugged and turned to go. “Suit yourself, it’s your funeral. I think everyone has the right to choose how and where they go out. Just ignore the sensor box. It won’t go off and send out a signal unless a very large piece of metal comes close.”
“How big and how close?”
“Uh, something the size of a pickup would have to be within a hundred yards or less.”
“I see.”
“Oh, and one more thing, sir.”
“What?”
“If one of those machines does come here, you should start swimming. The sensor will alert the Air Force. This island will be lit up a few minutes later.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“No problem. Luck.”
Bjorn watched them leave. They glanced back frequently and talked among themselves, laughing. He had no doubt they were making jokes at his expense. To them, he was a crazy hermit on an island who wouldn’t leave.
But in his mind, they were all lucky to be alive.
-6-
Bjorn spent the next hour or so tinkering with the device. He managed to alter its function rather easily, as it wasn’t built with any kind of failsafe. He set it up to beep when it detected something, but not to send out a radio signal. It still had its transponder active, of course, so anyone monitoring it wouldn’t know he had tampered with it. The device would appear to be functioning normally, but wouldn’t transmit its warning when the time came.
When the sun was beginning to set and he was in the middle of cooking up the last of his blast-killed yellow jacks for dinner, he heard a familiar sound: again, it was the buzzing of an outboard motor.
He threw sand into the fire and left the fish sizzling in the dark. He hoped he would have time to eat it later.
The boat circled the island twice while a spotlight played over the dark trees. Bjorn lay in the sand on his belly. He felt a few bugs crawl over his back and sweating arms; one prodded him over the kidneys with what felt like a needle, but he ignored it. Only his eyes moved, following the boat. It looked like the same one that had visited the first time.
In his right hand, he held his 9mm tightly. He was thinking hard. Had he tripped some kind of failsafe on the device by accident? He didn’t think so, but it was hard to be sure. He was a capable tech, but not a wizard.
No. It was far more likely they’d reported the strange black man who’d weathered a series of atomic blasts on a tiny offshore island. A man who hadn’t been interested in returning to the mainland despite his burns. Once they’d made the report, someone had put two and two together and sent them back out here to pick him up. Just maybe, they’d found their mystery man from the airport incident.
One would think that in the excitement of a pitched battle, these troops would have something better to do. But Bjorn knew better. Whoever wanted him, they wanted him badly. He was special. He was a single nanotized man in the midst of billions of normal people. Possibly, he was the only nanotized man on the planet who wasn’t a lo
yal member of Star Force.
Bjorn counted heads in the boat. There were six this time, instead of four. They’d come wearing their full kits as well, and their rifles were in their hands rather than slung over their backs.
He believed he could kill them all and survive, but it would be somewhat iffy. They were trained men on alert. They weren’t going to cut him a break this time. They were going to come in with their weapons hot, and all he had was a pistol with fifteen rounds in the magazine.
He still thought he could do it, so he didn’t flee. He waited, hugging the sand and moving nothing other than his eyes as they warily circled the island in their boat. He could have slid down into the small bunker he’d dug against future bombings, but then he wouldn’t have been able to see them as easily. Really, his bunker was just a dug out hole shored up with timbers. There were a few side tunnels, but he hadn’t built it for a siege. He’d only planned to use it as a bomb shelter. In a fight, it would be nothing more than a trap. They’d toss in grenades and it would all be over.
Finally, the team stopped circling and landed their boat. They didn’t drop an anchor, but jumped into the shallow water, boot splashing. Four of them came ashore while two others stayed with their tiny patrol craft. The motor had dropped down from a whine to a burbling sound.
“Hey man? Are you still here?” a voice called out.
Bjorn frowned. He thought he recognized the voice. Could it be the same corporal he’d talked to earlier?
Distrustful, he stayed down and quiet.
“I think he’s gone,” said one of the men.
“That’s bad. Stay alert. Eyes open, team.”
They advanced as a group to the center of the island where they’d buried their device. They checked it and seemed interested in nothing else. They whispered together and gazed out to sea in every direction at once. They were nervous.
Bjorn began to realize that these men weren’t looking for him. They weren’t searching the island or calling out to him. They were only interested in their sensor.
