by Mike Kraus
Rachel accepted the ear muffs and quickly put them on along with Marcus. A small timer ticked down to zero on one of the console’s monitors and a series of green lights lit up on each of the generators in the room, traveling down through the rows of them like a wave. Rachel turned to Marcus and raised her thumbs in the air. Seconds later, the roar of the diesel generators filled the room as they slowly came to life in succession, each one assisting the next in line with its power-up sequence. The noise of the generators was virtually silenced by Marcus and Rachel’s hearing protection, though the intense vibrations set up by the generators could be felt rattling through the floor into their feet, legs and chests.
Marcus fiddled with the volume knob on his ear muffs and turned on the microphone, sending a brief burst of the generator noise through the ear muffs’ speakers. The noise quickly disappeared as the electronics in the ear muffs compensated for the loud noise, and Marcus could hear his own voice as he shouted to Rachel, who had followed his lead in turning on her ear muffs as well.
“They’ll definitely know we’re here now! I bet you can hear this all the way up to the labs!”
Rachel gripped her gun and stuck her head out of the control booth, looking down through a row of generators to the door at the opposite end of the room. “We’re safe for now, I think. Just sit tight and wait for David to pulse Bertha.”
“Won’t we lose power when that happens?”
Rachel started to respond with a default “no” answer, but stopped as she realized that the room containing the generators was unshielded from electromagnetic pulses. The pulses released by the bombs hadn’t been strong enough to penetrate down to the depths of the laboratory and Bertha’s first shot had been directed upward. But if David fires Bertha indiscriminately, that’ll take out the generators, his computer systems, our lights… shit!
Rachel pulled on Marcus’s arm as she ran out of the control room, heading for the exit. “Come on! We need to get as far back to the lab as possible before that EMP goes off! I am not climbing up that elevator shaft using an EL light, much less in the dark!”
Marcus matched Rachel’s pace as they ran back down the aisle of generators. Glancing from side to side, he could see them turning furiously through ventilation holes in their covers. Seeing so many massive generators working simultaneously was borderline surreal while wearing the ear muffs since they did such a good job at blocking out the sound of the generators and reducing it to a mild background hum.
So absorbed in his thoughts was Marcus that he didn’t notice when Rachel had stopped dead in her tracks and he ran into the back of her, nearly knocking her over as he tried to keep his balance. He had just started to ask what she was doing when he noticed that her rifle was at her shoulder and she was staring down one of the side aisles, looking at something in between the two last generators before they reached the exit. Stepping to the side, Marcus looked around Rachel, gasping and raising his gun as he saw what was in front of them.
Limping on one paw with dried blood covering part of his back, Sam was standing in between the generators, shaking as he eyed Marcus and Rachel. Though Sam looked like he had gone to hell and back, that wasn’t the reason Marcus and Rachel both had their sights trained on him. In addition to the blood, matted fur and dust covering his body and despite the bright overhead lights, Sam had an unmistakable blue glow about him, covering him from head to toe.
“Is he one of them?” Marcus whispered the question and Rachel barely heard it, even though he was speaking directly into the microphone on her ear muffs. Rachel didn’t respond to his question as she stared at Sam, unblinking as she fought back tears. After losing her family, her one unmovable rock had been Sam. When they had been forced to abandon him earlier, she was able to lock her emotions away, walling them off so that she could get her job done. Seeing him standing before her in this condition broke her heart. She knew that she had to shoot, to destroy the shell that was once Sam but had clearly been infected by the nanobots, yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Marcus squinted as he watched Sam, staring into the dark, soulful eyes that—despite his physical condition—still showed every sign of life that there ever was. Marcus impulsively grabbed Rachel’s rifle, forcing the barrel down with one hand as he yelled. “No! Don’t shoot him!”
Rachel struggled against Marcus, surprised by his action, as she instinctively tried to keep her aim steady. Marcus rushed forward to Sam, letting his pistol drop to the floor as he fell to his knees in front of the animal. The spark of life in Sam’s eyes proved to be true as Marcus pulled him in close, wrapping his arms around the dirty and bloody fur. As Marcus pulled back, his arms began to glow and he held them up for Rachel to see. Her aim wavered as well and she ran to Sam, hugging him tightly before examining his wounds.
Though Sam looked to be badly injured, his paw had sustained the only major damage, having received a large cut traveling halfway up his leg. The rest of the blood, Rachel determined, was not from him, but from one or more of the creatures he had been attacking when he was separated from Marcus and Rachel in the corridor. As Rachel examined Sam and applied a bandage to his leg and paw, Marcus spoke loudly to her, questioning the blue glow that was spread over his fur.
“How is he glowing if he’s not infected?”
Rachel brushed her hand across Sam’s back and held it up. Where her fingers had penetrated into his coat, they now shone blue like his fur. As she rubbed her fingers together, the glow quickly faded, extinguished like a candle flame. “He must have had one hell of a fight with those things. These are just remnants of the swarm; there aren’t enough to form a critical mass, but there’s enough that they just sit there, immobile. Why Doe made them glow, I have no clue, but that’s all it is.”
Seeing how Rachel had dispensed of the leftover nanobots on her fingers, Marcus quickly began to brush his hands and arms across Sam’s body, snuffing out the unearthly light and restoring him to a normal—if somewhat beleaguered—look. Overjoyed to see Sam again, Marcus grinned happily. “I can’t believe you made it through that!”
His grin was quickly replaced by a puzzled expression as he noticed yet another blue glow begin to fill the room, overpowering the overhead lights. Marcus looked at his hands and arms before leaning down to inspect Sam. A chill ran through Marcus as he realized that neither he nor Sam were the cause for the blue glow. Distracted by her work on Sam’s paw, Rachel didn’t even notice the change in lighting until Marcus tapped her on the shoulder, prompting her to turn around.
Standing behind them, clustered into a semi-circle, stood six of the glowing creatures. Each of them held a scrap of metal in their hand, ranging from pieces of steel rebar to handles pulled off of doors. They stood twenty feet away from Marcus and Rachel, not moving save for slight twitches in their eyes and necks. Sam growled at the sight of the creatures and Rachel slowly stood up, stepping next to Marcus to face the pack. With Marcus’s pistol on the ground and Rachel’s rifle hanging from a shoulder strap, they were in no position to fight or run.
Marcus’s exasperated exclamation was lost in the noise of the generators as the creatures began to move forward.
“Seriously?”
Somewhere in Iowa
Dozens of mutated creatures wander idly through the ruined town, searching through buildings and vehicles for any survivors. A pair of horses taking shelter from the storm overhead are spooked by the creatures and bolt, escaping through a hole in the stockade out into the fields. Most of the buildings are left intact by the creatures, though the storm continues to cause damage from the incredible winds blowing through.
After a few hours pass, the creatures in the town reform with the horde outside the perimeter. Moving as a single unit, the thousands-strong army begins to move to the east, continuing its sweep across the country. Their howls are lost to the winds of the storm which moves with them, sending bolts of lightning arcing through the sky and to the ground.
In the top of the building most damaged
during the massacre caused by the creatures, a faint groan can be heard and a still figure awakens. His shirt is soaked with sweat and blood, his head pounds with pain and he feels like death itself. Upon seeing the blood he begins to panic, feeling for its source. When it becomes clear that it did not come from him, he looks around, seeing a river of red running across the room. Lightning illuminates the blood and its source both, a sight that makes the man immediately stand up, ignoring his pain.
He limps across the room and gently rolls the still form over, closing his eyes at the sight. The dead man’s throat is sliced open, revealing dried blood vessels that emptied their contents onto the wooden floor. The man sits down next to the body and places a hand over the body’s eyes, whispering a prayer as he raises his head to look at the ceiling. His gaze extends far beyond the ceiling as he searches the heavens, hoping for an answer to his unasked question.
Swallowing hard, he looks down at the body, wincing at the sight. “I’m sorry, son. But they will pay. I will take up my sword and bring down the vengeance of the Lord on them for bringing this horror into our family.”
The man stands up and shuffles to a nearby cot, taking the blanket from it and placing it over the dead man’s body, covering it from head to toe. He bows his head and prays again, standing alone in the top floor of the damaged building, the room illuminated by the continuous flashes of lightning from the storm outside.
After he finishes, the man searches the room for a small mirror, finding one inside a small dresser drawer. He examines his jaw, teeth and face in the mirror, finding deep bruises on his face and visible cracks in two of his bottom teeth. His jaw aches in pain every time he moves it, and he can feel his teeth wiggling in their sockets, loosened and damaged beyond repair. The man closes his eyes and wraps a cloth around his fingers, takes hold of the damaged teeth and pulls as hard as he can. He screams in pain as the damaged teeth pop out of their sockets and he throws them to the floor, channeling his rage and hatred into his singular purpose.
Adrenaline pumping through his veins, he ignores the pain in his leg as he moves to the stairs, finding them all but destroyed. He moves to the last intact stair and jumps, landing at the bottom with a thud. A large hole has been carved through the side of the building and tire tracks lead out through the grass, circling around the lake back to the road. The man holds a cloth in his mouth, staunching the flow of blood where he removed his teeth. There is no sign of the mutated beasts that attacked the village and slaughtered his family.
He cautiously searches each building, saying a prayer over the body of each of the villagers that he finds. Each discovery brings more sadness and anger to him, until all he can think about is revenge. Standing in the middle of the road, with lightning flashing overhead, he stares at a pair of tire marks left by a large vehicle. Arms raised above his head, he shouts at the top of his voice.
“I am coming for you! I am coming for you and will extract vengeance for every brother and sister you killed! You will pay for their deaths, and for the death of my son!”
Final Dawn: Episode 8
Somewhere in Iowa
Standing over a shallow grave next to a lake, a man places a broken piece of brick and mortar on top of a mound made of the same materials. He steps back from the grave, bows his head and says a quiet prayer as the fearsome winds carry away his words. His face is expressionless as he stares at the gravesite, not caring enough to even block his eyes from the dust that swirls through the small village. After a few moments pass, he turns from the grave and walks back toward the road, leaving a makeshift cross hammered into the ground at the head of the grave. Two words are inscribed in the cross that tilts in the wind, carved there by an unsteady hand and a sharp knife: My Son.
The man brushes away the pang of guilt that cries out for burials of the other villagers. Consumed with thoughts of revenge, he has time for only his son before he leaves the village, the place he was building up as a sanctuary. Crossing over the street, he approaches a small door embedded in the ground, secured with heavy padlocks and reinforced with heavy pieces of steel. The man quickly opens the locks with a key pulled from his pocket and pulls on the door, descending the crudely built flight of stairs down into the earth.
At the bottom of the stairs a lantern sits in the darkness. The man picks it up, lights it and continues down the passage. Dug by hand by the members of the village, the passage slopes downward, heading deeper into the earth, designed as a bunker in case of attack. The man was to give the order to retreat to the bunker, but he failed to do so, so the villagers held their ground, fighting with their last breaths against the onslaught of the horde.
The deaths of the villagers mean nothing to the man now. He enters a large chamber where the walls and ceiling are reinforced with thick wooden boards to keep the dirt and rock from giving way. Each of the walls of the chamber is lined with roughly built shelves and stocked with food, water, survival equipment and—most important in the man’s mind—weapons.
Collected together over the course of many years through both legal and illegal means, the weapons in the bunker represent the bulk of the village’s armaments. Handguns and rifles of every caliber are stacked together, with a few automatic weapons placed to one side. Arranged in order of destructive capability, the man passes swiftly by the first several shelves’ worth of weapons, heading straight for the end column. Together with two spare rocket-propelled grenades and an old Stinger missile sits a long black box, covered in dirt and caked with grease.
The man eases the black box off of the shelf and sets it on the dirt floor, placing the lamp on a nearby shelf to provide light. He brushes dirt from the latches on the case before depressing their switches, opening the two latches on the side of the case before releasing the four on the front. He lifts the top slowly, gazing upon the weapon inside with an air of reverence and respect for the power contained within it.
The rifle inside the heavily padded and shielded case is tan in color and well-worn, with rub marks along the barrel, trigger guard and cheek rest. Originally built in 2011, the M107A1 anti-materiel/sniper rifle is chambered in .50 BMG, a cartridge with a length of nearly half a foot and nearly an inch in diameter at its base. The M107A1 possesses an effective range of over a mile, with a record-shattering confirmed kill during 2020’s Operation Desert Strike of over two miles. Though banned from civilian ownership in 2022, a few of the rifles survived the purge, one of them making its way through to the possession of the man now kneeling in front of it.
Satisfied that the rifle and its accessories are ready for transport, the man quickly closes the case up and carts it up the stairs, carrying the seventy-five pound load easily in one hand. Leaving the gun near the door at the top of the stairs, the man returns to the bunker to retrieve ammunition and supplies, carrying them in a backpack and sets of leather saddlebags. Within twenty minutes he is finished and quickly locks the bunker again, sealing it off from any scavengers.
Leaving the supplies on the ground, the man makes his way to the far end of the village where the intruders originally appeared when they began their drive through the town. At a small building set apart from the others, windowless and barred in a manner similar to that of the bunker doorway, the man unlocks the door, taking the bunker lantern inside to light his way. The rumble of an engine sounds after a few moments and the man rides out, sitting inside a strange-looking contraption. He loads his gear into the vehicle and drives off to the west, following the path he knows the intruders took.
“Now,” he thinks, “It’s only a matter of time.”
David Landry
9:39 PM, April 11, 2038
After watching Rachel and Marcus leave, David sat in his chair, motionless as he watched the door in case they had to make a hasty retreat. After a few moments he stood up suddenly, remembering what he had told Rachel and Marcus before they left.
“I’ll probably lose my systems in here when I trigger the blas…..”
“Shit!” David ran across th
e room, pulling computer equipment and notebooks from shelves and throwing them into a pile inside a large equipment cupboard at the back of the lab, leaving the door to the cupboard open with a laptop turned on inside. After rounding up the equipment, David went to his computer, frantically tapping the keyboard and mouse to copy as much data as he could from the unshielded systems to the laptop. The equipment cupboard was built with EMP shielding inside it, and as long as the door was closed, any electromagnetic bursts from Bertha wouldn’t penetrate to the sensitive devices inside.
A sudden spark from the ceiling made David jump out of his seat, terrified of the creatures he was certain were in the room. Instead of creatures, though, David saw only the bright glow of the overhead lighting system as it slowly kicked on, powered by the massive generators in the basement far below. Standing in the middle of the room, David shielded his eyes as he looked up at the lights, laughing and jumping at the sight.
“They did it! They really did it!”
