Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues]

by Knight, Stephen

  “Do we need to go EVA and check it out?” Andrews asked.

  Leona chuckled. “No, no. We just need to mark the site and time. We didn’t get a great look at it, so we can’t be sure of the species. It looked black, but it could be brown or dark gray, so it could be anything. But it didn’t seem to be a bird of prey, more like a lark or a starling.”

  “Are you sure it couldn’t have been a parrot?” Mulligan asked. “Or maybe the rare Northwestern toucan?”

  Leona laughed. “It wasn’t anything exotic, Sam.”

  “Stop calling me that. And how do you know? The thing’s been exposed to severe radiation at some point in its lifecycle. It could have two heads, twelve beaks, and seven wings at this point. Not only could it be exotic, it could also be a verifiable freak. I say we all suit up and go chasing it through the field. Actually, you guys go. I’ll stay with the rig—and the burritos.”

  “Dear God, no more burritos. Please.” Andrews continued looking out into the field, but the bird was apparently lying low. “All right. Let’s make the appropriate hacks in the log and get underway. Let’s roll, KC.”

  KC advanced the control column, and the SCEV’s engines picked up. As the sound increased, the field to their right suddenly exploded. Hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand birds erupted from the tall weeds and took flight. Everyone in the cockpit gasped in surprise, and KC braked the rig to a gentle halt.

  “Wow, look at that!” she exclaimed. Her voice was high pitched with excitement. Andrews leaned forward and watched as the birds came together in a large trailing flock, whipping first left then toward the right as if of one mind. Together, the flock looked to him like some amorphous beast, rippling and rustling across the gray sky.

  “God, we need to capture this!” Leona said.

  “I already am,” Mulligan said. “I have the FLIR tracking the flock. Recording in both video and infrared. Congratulations—you’ve all found a flock of starlings. Your discovery will doubtless lead to many a distinguished commendation, as well as the formation of a local car wash, since starlings generally shit all over any vehicle they can find.”

  ***

  They spent the night outside Klamath Falls after crossing into Oregon. The remains of stalled traffic were beginning to reappear, and Leona took the rig off road at that point. She and Andrews agreed that tracking to the right would be a better choice than heading westerly. A large lake was in that direction, and doubtless more tributaries than they would want to deal with. The fear was that eventually, the rig would get stuck. Though they would likely be able to winch it out, no one wanted to take that kind of risk. And to pilot the rig into the city itself meant having to traverse two spans that crossed rivers—again, given the state of disrepair they were in, not something they were interested in. So they made it to an overgrown field outside the Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport and shut down the engines in favor of the APU.

  “You know, Klamath might be a pretty good opportunity for exploration,” Andrews said as the team began to unwind from the day’s travel. Just he, Mulligan, and Leona were in the second compartment. KC had excused herself to take a quick shower in the back. “I don’t mean a dismounted one, but we could send up the drone for a look-see. At night might be best. Heat plumes would show up nicely, I would think.”

  Mulligan nodded. “I’d go with that. The environment’s a lot less hostile than what we’re used to. Maybe still too hot for anyone to set up shop full time, but if people are still in the vicinity, a city would be a great place to scavenge.”

  Leona checked the clock on the rear bulkhead. “The sun’s already beginning to set. You want to plot a mission now?”

  “Not talking anything elaborate here, Lee. Just a circuit around the city. A slanting survey. I figure it’ll take an hour or so.”

  “Sure.”

  “We eating first?” Mulligan asked.

  “Why not,” Andrews said. “Chow is always good to have.”

  KC joined them a few minutes later, and they prepared a communal meal. Leona reviewed the footage Mulligan had captured of the flock of starlings, still clearly excited by the discovery. She theorized that the flock had been in Canada during the attack, as the birds had been known to summer there. Whether they had stayed or returned seasonally was still a question that could only be answered by examining specimens, but if they had remained, then it helped form a hypothesis that the farther north they went, the lesser the effects of the war.

  “Great, only Eskimos and Canadians survived,” Mulligan said. “At least the remainder of the world will continue to enjoy the treasure known as back bacon, eh.”

  Leona looked at him for a moment. “Sometimes, you just don’t make a lot of sense.”

  Mulligan sighed. “It’s an Old Guard thing. Sorry, Professor. Continue developing your high-minded hypothesis, and I’ll curb the witty repartee.”

  “You don’t think Canada actually survived as a nation, do you?” Andrews asked.

  Leona shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not. I think we would know by now if they had, even down at Harmony. But isolated pockets of society could still be functional. It’s a reach, but it is a possibility.”

  Andrews nodded. “Well, we’re not going to get close enough to see for ourselves, but it’s something worth considering later.”

  They ate their meal—chicken, corn, string beans, and sweet potatoes—then set about programming the drone for its flight. Essentially, the octocopter would make a circle around the majority of Klamath Falls and nearby Altamont, strobing the area with active millimeter wave radar while scanning with passive infrared. The radar would determine the general health of the community by providing data on the number of structures that existed, while the infrared would note any sources of heat. If something interesting came up, the device could be tasked with examining a specific target site at a closer range. The entire circuit would use up more than half the drone’s battery charge, so it wouldn’t have a great deal of remaining station time available before it had to return to the SCEV.

  They launched the aircraft a half hour later. Once it had left its cradle in the SCEV’s equipment pod, it deployed its sensors and began flying its route at just below maximum speed. As it flew, the air data sensors on the device sampled the air, which was still radioactive but not nearly as lethal as it could have been. A human could survive unprotected for some days before they ran the risk of compromising their health, and this was encouraging news. Clearly, the jet stream had ferreted away the vast majority of the fallout that would have otherwise descended upon the area. That news alone was enough to make Andrews’s heart pound. He’d already seen trees growing, birds in flight, and signs of human scavenging after the bombs had dropped. Their team was on the right track, and even if they weren’t yet in the right place, it was just a matter of time before they had a breakthrough.

  His spirits sagged when the drone began its surveillance circuit.

  Altamont was dark and cold. A fantastic fire had consumed almost the entire settlement. Structures were burnt-out shells, and the streets were already overrun with foliage. As the drone swung to the west and brought its optics and radar to bear on Klamath Falls, Andrews’s disappointment continued to blossom. While evidence of fire wasn’t readily apparent, the city had flooded at some point. Silt patterns could be detected even from three thousand feet, and taller structures had collapsed. Again, the drone found no heat sources—no tribe of squatters warming themselves around a roaring bonfire. It found intermittent, moving heat contacts, but they were too small to be humans. More fauna, and Leona theorized they might be feral cats of some kind, perhaps even bobcats or lynxes, which were known to live in the hills surrounding the city, or possibly even dogs or coyotes, the latter of which was a breed known for its hardiness. But nothing indicated that organized human activity was taking place during the night hours.

  They recovered the drone forty minutes later, and it settled back into its small cradle atop the SCEV. Andrews joined Leona a
s she re-watched the footage of the flight, paying special attention to the MMR data that had been collected. They found no substantial discoveries. What they had seen during the initial flight was the cold, stark truth.

  They weren’t near any living humans, only their memories.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next day found SCEV Four cruising up US-97 beneath perpetually sullen skies. The rig rolled through a multitude of small towns—Chemult, Crescent, Gilchrist—all of them similar to each other in that they had died long, lingering deaths. The fields surrounding the towns were overgrown and untended, which was another in a long line of disappointments. If there were people about, they’d have to farm to survive for the long term. Even though there were towns and cities in the area, those could offer only so much sustenance. But so far all the farmland was untended, running wild and fallow.

  There were some bright spots to consider. The radiation count was substantially lower, to the point now where an unprotected human could exist for days without fearing the more dreadful effects of exposure. If proper decontamination procedures were followed, then a sizeable population could actually thrive so long as it was careful about what foods were ingested and procedural hygiene was followed with something akin to mania.

  Still no signs of cultivation, though, Andrews thought. The die-off out here must’ve been immense.

  He maneuvered the SCEV around abandoned vehicles. In one field was the rotting carcass of an airliner—it had been there for more than a decade, and weeds and vines were wrapped around the exposed stringers and beams of its fuselage. Parts of the plane were missing, as if they’d been cut away.

  So someone’s been at work ...

  The closer they drew to Bend, the greater the desolation. The towns and neighborhoods surrounding the city were quiet and still. There was no smoke rising into the sky, so no cooking fires or the like had been struck. It was one of the primary signs of habitation: fire and smoke. And without smoke, there would be no fire. But that could have been a mandate of the security situation as well. Visible smoke could notify raiders where their next meal was coming from, so it was conceivable cooking took place in the nighttime hours.

  “Well, we’re here,” Andrews said to Mulligan as he slowed the SCEV to fifteen miles per hour. “As per the mission brief, we’re not going into the city itself, so we’ll depart the roadway here and start coming around to the right.”

  “Roger that. You interested in keeping the wheels on concrete for a bit longer? There’s a residential street about seven hundred meters ahead.”

  “Yeah, road surfaces are pretty good up here. You talking about this exit point here? What is it, China Hat Road?” Andrews pointed at the map display.

  “Yeah. I figure if all goes well, we can follow that down then come left onto, uh, Knott Road. That’ll start taking us northeast, and we can loop around to the north and look for a place to halt and start our initial observation.”

  “We’ll be cutting through a residential subdivision,” Andrews noted.

  “So we will,” Mulligan confirmed. “Listen, you want to find survivors, families will probably have a lower mortality rate than singles. Right?”

  “Right. Very well. Brief the crew.”

  Mulligan loosened his harness just enough to lean over and speak around the bulkhead. He passed on an abbreviated version of what the two men had discussed to Leona and KC. When they signaled acknowledgement, he sat up again, tightened his straps, and went back on the instruments. Andrews found the road easily enough, and turned the rig onto it. It was abandoned, save for an old pickup truck that was slowly rotting away on one curb. A townhouse community was to their immediate left. The structures were all dark brown and apparently vacant. Andrews kept an eye on them as the SCEV trundled past. There was no sense of movement, though the property was surrounded by a cement wall. He checked the MMR display, and upped the output a little bit. The wall was thick enough that the sensor couldn’t see through it, so he dialed it back down to the usual ten-mile range.

  “Yeah, that’s the thing about civilization. Lots of structures to clutter up the radar picture,” Mulligan said. “We want to see someone, we’ll need to keep eyes out. Looks like most of the buildings are on your side—you want me to take over so you can stay visual?”

  “Your rig,” Andrews said, indicating that he was transferring control over to Mulligan.

  “My rig.” Mulligan put his right hand on the sidestick column and took command of the SCEV. Andrews released his and kept his eyes on the townhouse complex. There was really nothing much to see. The parking lot was fairly empty, as people were at work when the attack happened. Multiple blasts of electromagnetic energy would have fried the ignition and computer systems of non-hardened civilian vehicles, so anyone with a car or truck of a vintage newer than 1975 would be reduced to walking. Next, the SCEV cruised past a large, rolling field. A dilapidated sign indicated it was a golf course. What should have been a carefully manicured green was now a field of towering weeds that slowly swayed in the gentle breeze. Fallen pine trees—Ponderosas, mostly—lay scattered about, but new ones were already entrenched, some of them over twelve feet tall. Some were stunted and twisted, possessing significantly fewer needles than they would need in order to continue growing. But others looked for all intents and purposes normal. They were a dark green, and seemed vibrant and full of life.

  As the SCEV progressed down the road, it passed more houses. They were of a decent size, and though they appeared weathered, most were in good shape. Some broken windows, but that could have been from temperature changes—for sure, the first several years after the war had been bitterly cold from the obscurants that had been blasted into the atmosphere, the so-called “nuclear winter” stage. That had likely resulted in most of the flora dying off, which in turn meant dire times for any human survivors who hadn’t succumbed to the radioactive fallout that had blanketed the area. Even though the weather patterns worked in favor of reducing the total lethality of the storms of radioactive particles that rode the winds, it didn’t eliminate it. Oregon might have suffered far less than Kansas, but it had suffered.

  Mulligan piloted the rig through the next turn. Overhead, the sky remained soot gray and generally featureless. The residential neighborhood the vehicle cruised through was quiet and serene. If not for the trees and weeds slowly swaying in the light breeze, it could almost be mistaken for a still photograph.

  Finally, they saw signs of previous habitation. A line of containers had been erected near a park, and a multitude of ragged tents surrounded them. The tents were emblazoned with faded red crosses. Earthen berms had been created, and those were only occasionally dotted with clumps of hardy grass or scraggly juniper bushes. Mulligan slowed the rig when it drew abreast of the site.

  “Huh. Looks like the Red Cross got in on the act over here,” he said, looking out the side port. “To be honest, things are pretty well preserved, considering.”

  “Was this a disaster relief site, then?” Andrews asked.

  “Yep.” Mulligan leaned forward and looked around. “I see some tactical trucks. National Guard must’ve responded, as well.”

  “You know what, let’s halt here for a bit.”

  Mulligan braked the rig to a halt. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I kind of want to go EVA and check it out a little more closely.” Andrews released his harness, and the inertial reels retracted the shoulder straps into the seat.

  Mulligan looked at him as he set the parking brake. “You ‘kind of’ want to leave the rig and walk around in post-holocaust Bend, Oregon? What the hell for?”

  “I want to check out the site. Environment can sustain us without gear, right? Rad count’s super low, lower than we’ve ever seen. We’ll need to obtain physical samples at some point anyway, and this place is as good as any.”

  “So what you’re telling me is, you want to step outside and smell the only-slightly-less-radioactive air of the Pacific Northwest?” Mulligan asked.
“Sorry, sir, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense. I thought the plan was we’d do an initial mobile recon, then find a suitable laager area for longer-term aerial and environmental assessment. Calling a halt at the first point of interest we come across and making an unplanned dismount wasn’t in the OPORD.”

  Andrews pointed at the scene outside. “Mulligan, that’s essentially the first sign of a real governmental response we’ve come across. Everyplace else, folks were wiped out before any assets could be mobilized. You say those are National Guard trucks over there?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Where did they come from? There’s no Guard camp in Bend, they’re all north of here in Portland. What are the chances these guys were on-station when things went to hell?”

  “Captain, you’re using the presence of some five-ton trucks as the rationale for your decision?” Mulligan shook his head in disbelief.

  Leona appeared in the doorway. “What’s up, guys?”

  Mulligan jerked his thumb out the side port. “Captain Andrews wants to dismount and check out this relief site.”

  “Yeah, it is interesting, I’ll admit,” Leona said. “Mike, why do you want to dismount here?”

  “What went down here was a coordinated effort. I’d like a closer look at it, and I figure if the local environment isn’t hostile to life any longer, why not?” Andrews pointed at the MFD in front of him. “Look, the radiation is barely higher than standard background. Temperature’s sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and we have cloud cover to protect us from direct exposure to the sun. I figure so long as we don’t stir up too much dust, we’ll be good to go. Right?”

  “We need to conduct an in-depth recon and environmental assessment before we can safely dismount. We’ve done neither,” Mulligan said. “This is standard procedure prior to conducting extra-vehicular activity. You all well know how much I love standard procedures. I’d also like to point out that we have minimal crew redundancy, as we’re running at half-strength. If something goes sideways, we’ll be hard-pressed to improvise a resolution.”