“Well, I can help out with the environmental assessment,” Leona said. “I’ve been collecting metrics the entire time. There’s nothing airborne that can kill us right off the bat, but for sure the soil is pretty heavily contaminated. Not to the degree it is around Harmony, but it’s still potentially harmful if someone were to inhale something. Lots of alpha particles out there, for sure.”
“The rain’s got to have diminished them,” Andrews said.
“That’s conjecture on your part, Mike,” Leona replied. “We don’t have any soil samples to support that supposition.”
Andrews raised his finger. “My point exactly.”
“This is nuts,” Mulligan said. “You didn’t listen to me in San Jose, Andrews—remember that? I wanted Spencer to stay with the rig, and you let him come with us.”
Andrews glared at the sergeant major. “Thanks for the reminder, Mulligan.”
“Not rubbing your nose in it, son. But you need to stop and think about what it is you’re going to accomplish out there. I know you’re eager to find some clues that might lead us to a functional human settlement. But I’m opposed to this method of discovery, and for all the right reasons. We have to make decisions based off of fact, not emotion.”
“Really? Wasn’t leaving Harmony to bury your family an emotional decision, Mulligan? And how smart was it to take the post commanding general with you?” As soon as he’d said it, Andrews felt a surge of regret. It was hateful of him to make that play, and the truth was, Andrews did not hate Mulligan at all.
The comment scandalized Leona. “Mike! What the hell are you doing?”
“Mulligan ... Scott, I’m sorry, man,” Andrews said as the blood rushed to his face.
Mulligan waved it away. “It’s cool, Captain. You’re not wrong. For the record, I didn’t want Benchley to come at all. But yeah, me laying my family to rest was a hundred percent emotion, and there was no logical reason behind it. However, we’re not in the same set of circumstances out here. Like I always tell you guys in training: Do as I say, not as I do.” Mulligan’s voice was flat and expressionless. He turned his head and swept his eyes across the displays for a moment, then looked outside. “Listen, you want to do this, it’s your call. But I’d really recommend you suit up anyway. We can never be too careful. San Jose taught us that. Right?” He turned back to Andrews, and the hard cast in his eyes made Andrews realize the big man left California with regrets as well.
“All right. That’s a deal.” Andrews looked at Leona. “Lee, you up for this?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Mulligan stirred then. “Hey, wait a minute. We can’t have both of you dismount. Lieutenant Eklund should stay with the rig—can’t have both officers out of the rig at the same time. I’ll go with you, sir.”
“I’ll need to get samples while I’m out there, and process them in the remote lab,” Leona said by way of protest. On the rig’s right side, next to the outer airlock door, another sealed compartment held a small biochemistry lab where samples could be processed and analyzed without the danger of bringing potential contaminants inside the SCEV.
“I can collect the samples and load them in the lab,” Mulligan said. “Getting a couple of scoops of dirt and some organic matter isn’t going to be a real test of my abilities.”
“Mulligan, you can’t even resist a burrito.”
Mulligan cracked a smile. “Cute.” He sobered immediately. “Both of you can’t go, for reasons already discussed. End of story.”
Leona sighed and slowly turned to Andrews. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to remain in the rig, Captain?”
“What, and let you and Mulligan have all the fun? You might start fraternizing out there.”
Mulligan barked out a laugh and shook his head. “Son, you have severe socialization issues.”
***
The SCEV’s airlock was supposed to be big enough to process two people at a time, but the designers had never intended one of the occupants be big enough to play guard on an NBA team. Andrews had to stand against one bulkhead to accommodate Mulligan’s mass.
“This would’ve been easier without all the gear,” Andrews said. Both men wore full environmental suits with facemasks. They carried weapons and rucksacks with spare ammo and supplies, just in case. Mulligan had insisted.
Mulligan shifted his big 7.62-millimeter rifle. “Hey, you can always go back, sir.”
“Yeah, not even. Four, Andrews. Commo check.”
Leona’s voice came back immediately. “Good commo, Mike.”
“Rog. We’re going to cycle the airlock now.” Andrews reached over and pressed the button that activated the outer airlock door. The light above the door turned red, and a tone sounded. Then the door opened, splitting in two, one section rising up, the second lowering to the ground, forming a ramp. Mulligan was first out. As soon as he was clear of the airlock, his rifle was in his gloved hands. He scanned the area, keeping the weapon at low ready as he stepped down to the street and drifted a few feet to his left. Andrews followed him out and stepped to the right. He had his own rifle in his hands, and he scanned the area to the rear of the rig. The engines droned their monotone song. He heard a vague electric whine coming from the machine’s wedge-shaped bow. It was the minigun pods as Leona conducted an azimuth check. The SCEV’s guns were hot.
“All right, we’re clear,” Andrews reported. Wind swirled around him, not warm, not cold.
“Cycling the airlock now—make sure you guys stay clear.” This was KC. A second later, the airlock doors hissed closed and locked with an audible thunk.
“Clear left,” Mulligan reported.
“Clear right,” Andrews replied.
“Okay, Captain. It’s your show. Where do you want to go first?”
“The tent city. I want to see what’s in there. Maybe check out what’s on the other side of that berm, too.”
Mulligan scanned the area, the stock of his rifle still in his right armpit. “Let’s try not to break visual contact with the rig, if at all possible. We don’t want Eklund and Winters having to guess where we need supporting fires if things blow up in our faces.”
“Roger that. I’m listening to you this time, big man.”
“I must still not be very persuasive, Captain. I’ve noticed we’re outside the rig.”
Andrews snorted and led the way. Moving slowly and deliberately, he stepped off the road and walked toward the relief site. The grass was firm and springy beneath his feet. Even though this portion of the nation was more temperate than the Midwest, it still experienced seasonal change. The grass was starting to come alive now, and its color indicated it was still processing chlorophyll. That meant the overcast skies they’d been traveling under for the past several days wasn’t constant, and despite the severely depleted ozone layer, the grass had adapted to the change in solar radiance. It was mostly crabgrass and weeds now, of course; any planted grass had died long ago. Some of the weeds stood almost three feet high, slender stalks topped with thin tendrils. It looked almost like some sort of wild crop.
“Mulligan, you know what kind of vegetation this is?” he asked.
“Wheat grass. Bane of many a homeowner back in the day. I see even nuclear war can’t kill it.”
“Four, you want samples of this?” Andrews asked.
“Roger that, but you don’t have to do it right this second,” Leona responded.
“Got it.” Andrews continued pressing forward, walking toward the row of tattered tents. He approached one adorned with a faded red cross and stopped beside it, turning to look over his shoulder for Mulligan. The big sergeant major was about twenty feet off to his left, already orienting on the tent, rifle still held at low ready. He gave Andrews a curt nod as a puff of wind made the tent’s torn fabric shell ruffle like distant, irregular thunder. Andrews pushed aside the remains of the tent’s entrance flap and stepped inside.
There were several cots inside. Perhaps at one time, they’d been arranged neatly; now they
were sprawled everywhere. A line of tables was at the far side of the tent. Some were on their sides, others were still upright. Moldering boxes sat on them. Andrews walked over and looked at the boxes without touching them. They were faded and severely weathered, but he could make out the red cross on them. Decayed paper was inside. As far as he could tell, they might have been pamphlets of some sort. Plastic water bottles were scattered about, some still full, but the liquid inside was cloudy and certainly not fit for human consumption. He turned his attention toward the cots then, moving around them. They were soiled with rust-colored stains. Blood, or some other substance he supposed. Then he saw a small hand sticking out from beneath one, or more correctly, the remains of a hand. The flesh was gone, leaving only dull bone. Some of the fingers were missing. He cast around for a moment, looking for them. He saw one bone lying in a patch of weeds, then another a few feet away. They were very small. They’d belonged to a child, who had died here in this tent.
He didn’t bother with the cots any further. If anyone was still here, he was ten years too late to help them.
He turned and saw Mulligan looking in through a hole in the tent wall, rifle still at low ready. He jerked his head toward the next tent.
“More bodies in there,” he said. “They’ve been there for a while.”
Andrews pointed at the scattered finger bones. “You see these bones here? They’re spread around a bit.”
“Animals foraging, probably,” Mulligan said. “Dead people can make a good meal, even if they’ve been irradiated. We probably want to stay out of the tents, sir. I don’t think there’s a chance we can catch anything, but let’s not push it.”
Andrews nodded and left the tent. The two men wandered through the camp, peering inside other tents but not venturing inside. Lots of people had been here—hundreds, possibly. Desiccated corpses lay in many of the tents, while others had been apparently used, then vacated. Some of the structures had collapsed, entombing anything inside beneath weathered nylon and plastic that would probably never degrade. Many of the tents had cots, but no bodies. Plastic bags were everywhere as well, pinned wherever they’d been blown. Mulligan bent over one.
“Lettering’s still legible on this one. Saline, it says. Looks like the good ol’ Red Cross was doing what it was supposed to,” he said, straightening up.
Andrews pointed at the wall of earth. “What’s with the berm?”
“Don’t know. Let’s check it out. Don’t walk on it, though—it’s surface soil, so it’s going to be hot.”
“Roger that.”
They walked toward one berm, then paralleled it until they came to its termination. Andrews stepped around it and saw it wasn’t a berm after all. Mulligan followed him, and both men peered into the deep pit on the other side.
It was full of bodies. Some were in body bags, others wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, and a good number had just been dumped in with whatever they had been wearing when they expired. Adults, children, even household pets.
“Mass grave,” Mulligan said after a few moments. “Makes sense—too many to bury individually. A lot of them aren’t even in body bags, so it looks like the sanitation procedures were breaking down. Guess these people didn’t have it so good, after all.”
Andrews shook his head. “Damn, man.” There was something eerie about standing on the precipice of so much death. So many lives lost, so many dreams unfulfilled. He couldn’t shake the notion that he was surrounded by a host of restless spirits, lamenting their deaths and those they had loved.
That could have been me, he thought, and he was surprised at how selfish he felt at the notion. He’d seen bodies before, obviously, but never so many in one place at one time. That they had wound up rotting away in the bottom of an unfilled hole in the ground was shameful.
“What the fuck is that?” Mulligan muttered.
Andrews turned away from the pit. “What?”
Mulligan didn’t answer. He walked over to the other side of the grave site and stopped. Andrews followed. Mulligan stood motionless, looking down at something on the ground.
A bouquet of wild flowers. Two different varieties, one with white petals surrounding a yellow center, the other purple with white tendrils extruding from its pistil. They’d been neatly cut and tied together with a piece of string that was still white.
“Holy shit,” Andrews said.
“Guys, what have you found?” Leona asked over the radio. She’d been monitoring their communications.
“Flowers,” Mulligan reported. “Anything on the MMR? Is it still tracking in the ten-mile band?”
“Roger, I haven’t altered the setting. What’s this about flowers?”
“Lee, we’ve found what looks like a, uh, bouquet of flowers here. They don’t look like they’re anything special, just something wild we haven’t really seen yet, but ...”
“What’s their condition?” Leona asked.
“A couple of days old, if you ask me,” Mulligan replied, “but I only know how to grow tobacco plants underground. Botany was never my thing.” He stepped away from the flowers and starting scanning the area. He raised his rifle a bit as he turned to the north. Andrews mimicked him, only looking southerly.
“Something on the ground over there, few dozen meters to our right,” he reported.
Mulligan turned. “Got it. Let’s check it out.”
“What do you guys see?” Leona asked.
“Stand by, Four.” Andrews and Mulligan moved fast as they rounded the far side of the pit and walked along its far side. Mulligan slowed, stopped, and after taking another look around, knelt.
“Tracks,” he said.
“What kind of tracks?” Leona asked over the radio.
Mulligan shook his head in exasperation. “Tire tracks. From a truck. That’s about the best we can tell you right now.”
“Where are they headed?”
Andrews turned and looked farther south. “They either came from those five-ton trucks, or they went there,” he said.
“Makes sense,” Mulligan said, rising to his feet.
“Why’s that?”
The sergeant major pointed at the tire tracks with his rifle. “Because those were made by a five-ton. Let’s check them out.”
They jogged to where the old National Guard trucks sat. They’d been there for years, and their tires were flat. Mulligan slung his rifle and walked up to one. He pulled open the passenger door in the cab and peered inside briefly, then walked to the front.
“Hood’s already unlatched.” Mulligan reached over and grabbed a handhold and lifted. The hood tilted upward, rising on hinges that squealed in protest at the front of the truck. He looked over the diesel engine beneath, and Andrews stepped up beside him. The engine had been cannibalized, and judging from the unpatinaed metal surfaces where the removed parts had been, it had happened relatively recently.
“Well, Captain, it looks like I owe you an apology,” Mulligan said as he stepped back from the truck and lowered the hood. “I guess coming out here wasn’t such a bullshit idea after all.” He put his hands on his hips and looked at the truck, eyes narrowed behind his mask’s visor.
“Leona, let’s get the UAV up in the air,” Andrews said.
“Winds are starting to climb, Mike. And the ceiling is pretty low. We might not be able to recover it automatically,” Leona replied.
Andrews considered that. “That’s all right. I’ll put it back in the cradle manually if I have to. Mulligan and I are going to return now. We’ll grab samples later.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They configured the UAV for a radial search at two thousand feet, which would put it right below the cloud ceiling overhead. While the clouds themselves would serve to obscure the real-time video, they wouldn’t deter the small aircraft’s millimeter wave radar at all. The only real threat they posed was turbulence. While the eight-rotored drone was relatively hardy and had more than enough capability to recover from an upset before anything drastic happened,
substantial turbulence could damage it beyond their ability to repair in the field. They had extra electric motors, booms, and rotors, the hull and the electronics it contained weren’t considered perishable. But if the unit was sufficiently compromised to where it could no longer function reliably, then the unit was essentially grounded.
There were no substantial obstructions surrounding the SCEV, so they launched the drone from where it was parked alongside the relief camp. From the air, the burial pit looked much larger than it had on the ground, and it was reasonable to assume it contained not only hundreds of corpses, but thousands. Dozens of body bags, presumably filled, lay arranged at the northernmost edge of the pit. They were stacked on top of each other like firewood, and atop those, more bodies wrapped in sheets and blankets could be seen. They’d never made it into the pit, and had been left to rot and decay where they lay.
“That’s so terrible,” KC whispered from the engineering station as she looked at the display in the second compartment.
“It’s how it works, Winters,” Mulligan said. “People die in war all the time. The only thing notable about this is that these are our American brothers and sisters, not people in another nation.” He looked away from the display and regarded the young crew chief for a long moment. “If you’d rather not see this, maybe Captain Andrews would allow you to go up front. You can monitor the rig’s systems from there.” At the moment, the cockpit was unattended.
“I’m good,” KC said, though her voice was still small.
“Kace, you can go forward if you like,” Andrews told her. “It’s not a problem here.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, turning to scan the engineering multifunction displays. “I have to get used to this, right? It’s what happened. I need to see it.”
Mulligan reached out and put a hand on one of her small shoulders. “You had it easy down in Harmony,” he said, and his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “Things were and remain hell up here. But that doesn’t mean you have to take it in all at once, kid.”
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 12
