Final Dawn: Season 3 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series)

by Mike Kraus

  “Okay, that’s enough doom and gloom for now.” Marcus jumped to his feet. “We’ll have plenty of time for that later. For now, we need to set up a watch pattern. I’m feeling alert enough, so I’ll go first. David, you can go next, then Rachel.”

  Standing there at the front of the locomotive, one arm bound in a sling with bandages taped across his shoulder, Marcus looked like he had been to hell and back. His attitude, on the other hand, was that of a boisterous three year old once again, happy and full of energy. Rachel smiled at him, glad to see that he was beginning to return to his old self. After being worried about him, and how he and David were behaving toward each other, it was good to see a positive change in the midst of everything that was going on.

  As Rachel stretched out near the back of the locomotive with Sam curled up next to her, she couldn’t help but think about Marcus’s question. “Wish we had left him alive or something?” Having the thought of Doe to deal with had kept her marginally distracted from the larger picture. With that distraction now gone and left by the side of the tracks to rot, she had no other choice but to face the AI head on, including the numerous implications that came with it. Doing so meant dredging up thoughts and feelings she hadn’t considered for many days. Rachel closed her eyes, but instead of darkness, the image of her daughter flashed by, followed by her husband and her home. Cities that she had passed through, the remnants of bodies, burned out cars and collapsed buildings all came trickling back to the forefront of her thoughts, though they didn’t come alone. A slow, steady buildup of guilt accompanied them, along with a profound sense of emptiness. A rustle from David several feet in front of her suddenly made her wonder. Does he feel the same thing? If David felt a similar measure of guilt for what had happened, he didn’t show it.

  Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims

  7:02 AM, April 25, 2038

  The clear skies that had allowed the Arkhangelsk to obtain imagery of the canal persisted through the morning. Commander Krylov rotated the periscope slowly as the Arkhangelsk sailed the last few miles down the coast past Veracruz on its way into the first section of the canal. The soft tap of rubber on the metal floor made Krylov turn around and he smiled as Nancy and Leonard approached him.

  “Ms. Sims! Mr. McComb! So good of you to be here.” There was no trace of the dark sarcastic humor Krylov had shown earlier in the darkened hallway. Nancy and Leonard had gotten no sleep, having spent the last few hours discussing Krylov’s strategy to take out the bridge the creatures were using to cross over the canal.

  “Commander.” Leonard nodded and sat down in a seat next to the periscope. Krylov stepped back and motioned for Nancy to step forward.

  “Please, take a look, Ms. Sims. Place your arms on the handles and use them to turn left and right.”

  Nancy pressed her forehead against the padded surface above the eyepiece, well-worn from years of use. The bright light of the rising sun made her squint as her eyes struggled to adjust. As the outside world came into focus, Nancy began to see the coastline take shape, with beaches, trees and a few scattered houses near a large runway in the distance. As Nancy slowly rotated the periscope, her hand brushed against a button on the side of one of the handles, causing the magnification of the scope to change. Everything in her view suddenly leapt forward, appearing larger than it had before and startling her in the process.

  To someone who hadn’t spent weeks traveling cross-country and witnessing destruction on a scale never before seen by mankind, the few shattered buildings and scorched fields in the distance might have appeared to be the result of a fire or an earthquake. Nancy knew differently, though, recognizing the tell-tale patterns of destruction that told of bombs that had fallen close by.

  “Commander Krylov?” Nancy stepped away from the periscope, rubbing her eyes. “It looks like at least one nuke was dropped nearby. Are you sure the canal’s clear?”

  Krylov pointed at a nearby computer screen and nodded. “Everything we looked at indicated that it was. The area was hit hard, but the canal was out of the danger zone for most of the damage from what we can tell.”

  Nancy looked at Leonard who nodded slowly. “Let’s hope you’re right, Commander.”

  Leonard jumped in next before Krylov had a chance to reply. “Mr. Krylov,” he said, deliberately avoiding the use of Krylov’s position as a test of sorts, “the Panama Canal isn’t exactly short. The imagery we saw was only of a fraction of it; aren’t there other bridges that run across?”

  If Krylov was bothered by Leonard’s use of the term “Mr” instead of “Commander,” he didn’t show it. “Oh, but of course, Mr. McComb.” Krylov motioned to the same computer screen again as he pushed a few keys, pulling up a wider satellite view of the area they were entering. “There are three main bridges through the area. One at the start, one near the middle, at the automated locks, then another near the end. These bridges appear to operate as both pedestrian, train and vehicular ones, which makes our job much easier.”

  Leonard whistled softly as he stood up, leaning forward on his crutches to examine the image up close. “That’s a lot of concrete and steel to take out without getting spotted. Are you sure we can do it?”

  Krylov nodded. “We don’t have a choice, Mr. McComb. Unless you can think of another option.”

  Leonard shook his head and sat back down, idly rubbing around the stump of his leg. “Not really another option so much as wondering how we’ll pull it off, especially in broad daylight when these things’ll be streaming across the bridges like cockroaches during spring cleaning.”

  Commander Krylov pointed at the screen again, tapping the locations of the first and last bridges. “From the last pass of scans we were able to obtain, it looks like these two bridges get the least amount of traffic. Most of the creatures seem to be congregated around the central one. For the first and last bridges, we shouldn’t have any trouble getting the explosives set. For the middle one, though, you may be right. But it’s a risk that you and Ms. Sims made clear that we need to take to try to delay these things as long as possible.

  “Once all sets of explosives have been set and we’re clear of the final bridge, we’ll blow them all at once to ensure that we’re nowhere near when it happens. It’s an imperfect plan to be sure, though I see no other option.”

  “All right,” Nancy said, looking to Leonard for his silent confirmation, “how long until the first explosives are planted?”

  Krylov looked at his watch. “We have approximately fifteen minutes until we reach the first bridge when we’ll surface and plant the first set of explosives.”

  “Mind if we go up and watch?” Leonard stood up and balanced on his crutches, demonstrating that while he might have been knocked down, he was anything but out. “We’ll stay out of their way. Plus, we might be of some use.”

  Krylov hesitated, nearly denying Leonard’s request before relenting. “Very well. Don’t leave the stairwell, though. If we have to close the hatch in a hurry, you two cannot be anywhere close to it.”

  Leonard turned and started hurrying toward the exit, calling over his shoulder as he departed with Nancy. “No problem!”

  Ten minutes later, Leonard and Nancy stood near four men in the blood-stained stairwell. The men looked nervous, more with themselves and the task they were about to perform than with the two strangers standing nearby. Nancy kept her arm around Leonard to help him balance as they waited for the hatch to open.

  “How much longer?” Nancy whispered to Leonard, who shrugged in response. A soft flashing amber light answered Nancy’s question, as did a loud mechanical rumble from the direction of the top of the wide stairwell.

  Light burst through cracks in the hatch as it rolled open, flooding the compartment with fresh air, the smell of the ocean and the sound of rushing water. The Arkhangelsk had barely surfaced as it was passing under the first bridge on its way to the locks as the helmsman fought to balance stealth and speed. The depth of the canal was less of a worry, since there was more than enou
gh room for the Arkhangelsk to remain fully submerged and make its way through.

  Radios strapped to the crewmen’s chests crackled and a terse order was issued. They immediately ran up the stairs, exiting onto the exterior of the Arkhangelsk. Two of the men ran for the port side while the other two headed to the edge of the starboard. They dropped to their knees as a shudder ran through the ship, causing Leonard to tip forward, nearly losing his balance. The ship came to a near stop and began to surface faster, bringing them high on the water.

  When the submarine finally finished moving, the men extracted sets of tubes from bags carried on their backs and began aiming them at the bridge supports high above their heads. Small black shapes flew from the tubes and landed on the steel of the bridge with rhythmic thumps as the magnetic sheaths wrapped around the plastic explosives kept both the explosives and their detonators attached to the bridge. Even as high as the Arkhangelsk was in the water, launching the explosives at the high points of the bridge was risky, and more than one failed to attach because it simply didn’t gain enough altitude. The combination rail, vehicular and pedestrian bridges were all of the bascule drawbridge variety, designed specifically to ensure that ships of all heights passing through the canal could get through. A high arch on the first drawbridge meant that the explosives couldn’t be evenly distributed, but instead had to be clustered around both ends.

  The total time the four crewmen took to affix the explosives to the drawbridge was under two minutes, after which they hurried back down the stairwell as thousands of creatures continued to stream over the structure high overhead. One of them spoke softly into his radio and the hatch began to close as the submarine sank back into the water, moving forward to the next target.

  Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry

  5:07 AM, April 25, 2038

  “Rachel!” Marcus’s voice was low, but he still managed to hiss at her as he spoke, communicating a frightening level of urgency and panic. “Wake up! We’ve got problems!”

  Rolling over and pushing herself to her knees, Rachel crawled forward, joining Marcus and David who were each crouched behind a control panel, peeking above it to watch out the side of the train. Sam lifted his head to look at Rachel and she shook her head at him, whispering for him to stay still.

  “What’s going on, guys?” Rachel slid in between David and Marcus, who both pointed through the window. After meandering through the woods for a while, the tracks converged with a highway, running parallel to it for several miles. Out on the highway, illuminated both by the glimmer of the rising sun and lighting from the storms, Rachel saw the reason why David and Marcus were both staying hidden. No more than fifty feet away, thousands of creatures were moving together down the road heading south. Changed individuals both old and young made up the group that was larger than Rachel could have imagined. The creatures paid no attention to the train as it passed them by, whipping down the tracks at top speed, just as it had when it was under the control of the creatures previously.

  Marcus turned around and sat down on the floor of the locomotive, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “Damn… that’s a lot of them.”

  “These migrations seem to be getting much more common.” Rachel whispered. “I guess it’s time for them to all congregate at the nexus.”

  Marcus peeked back up at the window, watching how quickly they were traveling compared to the creatures. “Well that’s no problem. We’ll get there way before the creatures do, going this speed.”

  “True, but who’s to say that the AI’s going to wait for every creature to reach the nexus before launching its next step? What about creatures in the rest of the world? I’m not sure they’d be able to make it here, let alone in any reasonable time frame.”

  “That…” David turned around as well, trying to think of a good reply, “that’s a very good point. What about those creatures? Separated as they are from the nexus, they won’t be able to get here. So what’s going to happen to them?”

  “Couldn’t there be other places where they’re building these nexuses?” Marcus’s question was met with a quick shake of David’s head.

  “Definitely not. I would have seen them on the satellite scans. Whatever they’re doing, they decided on this particular location, luckily for us. I’d hate to be stuck trying to get across the Atlantic.”

  “So what happens to these things when the nexus is gone?” Marcus looked at Rachel, repeating David’s question.

  “Your guesses are as good as mine. They might self-destruct, try to re-form in swarms or who knows what else. It doesn’t really matter, though. Not now, anyway. We just have to destroy the AI before it does whatever next-level bullshit it’s trying to do. We can worry about mopping up the survivors afterward.”

  The answer Rachel gave was unsatisfying to the three of them, but with nothing better it was the only one they had. Getting back on their knees, the group resumed their watch of the creatures, occasionally pointing out a particularly disfigured or odd looking one as they tried to make light of the admittedly frightening situation. Though the creatures had no idea that Rachel, Marcus and David were on the train, if they found out they could easily derail the train and ensure that the three wouldn’t make it to the coast.

  The tracks continued along next to the road for several more minutes before branching away, back into the woods and fields as it had before. With the creatures long out of sight, the trio all breathed a collective sigh of relief and sat back down on the floor of the locomotive. Too filled with adrenaline, Rachel and David had no more interest in sleeping and instead busied themselves with organizing their supplies. David started to set up his computer and electronics that he had taken from the APC before it was destroyed while Marcus and Rachel took stock of their food and water and examined the controls of the train in detail.

  Marcus glanced over at David sitting on the floor, hunched over his computer as he was examining satellite imagery. “Hey David, where do you think we are?”

  “Hm?” David turned and looked at Marcus, distracted by what he was looking at.

  “Our location? Any ideas?”

  “Oh, sorry. These aren’t live images; there’s too much cloud cover for that.” David sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing his temple as he tried to figure out where they were. “Somewhere in the Carolinas, I’d guess. I’m not exactly sure where this particular track goes, though.”

  Rachel leaned over David’s shoulder, taking a look at his computer. “That’s something we need to figure out soon. If this train was on its way to the gulf as we assumed, there could be a track changeover that we need to take to get there.”

  David nodded. “Two steps ahead of you there. I’m looking through some of this older imagery to try and figure out what track we’re on, then I should be able to tell you exactly how we’ll get there.”

  Marcus leaned back against the wall, looking out at the sharp shadows cast from the trees by the flashing lightning. “I wonder how Leonard and Nancy are getting on. It’d be nice to at least know that they’re alive.”

  There was no response from either Rachel or David as they all thought about Leonard, Nancy and the submarine, hoping that—somehow—a miracle was being pulled out of a hat. The only sounds in the locomotive for several minutes were the engine, Sam’s gentle snoring, and the tap of David’s fingers on his laptop keys. Locked in a battle with the computer, he worked tirelessly until, finally, he spoke.

  “What the hell…”

  Rachel looked over at him lazily, then caught sight of what was on the screen. “Hey! You connected with the satellite!”

  David nodded slowly as he stared at the screen, a curious expression on his face. “Yes, just temporarily. It’s down again, but… this can’t be right.

  “The satellite log shows that there was a login from… the Pacific Ocean. Not too long ago, either.” He looked up at Rachel and Marcus, turning the screen more so that Rachel could see the data herself.

  “How on earth can you know th
at someone in the Pacific was looking at the satellite?” Marcus raised his eyebrow as he asked the question.

  “GPS coordinates. The satellite records the location of every access attempt for security, plus a whole host of other information, too.”

  “If I had to guess,” Rachel said, interrupting David as a smile slowly built on her face, “then I’d say that Leonard and Nancy are not only alive, but on their way to us as we speak.” She jabbed her finger at the screen, pointing to a collection of letters that Marcus didn’t recognize. “That’s not one of our machines, and it’s certainly not anything I’ve seen from a US government computer.”

  Rachel’s smile was infectious, and Marcus and David quickly found themselves grinning along with her, overjoyed at the knowledge that Leonard and Nancy were most likely alive, well, and bringing some much needed backup to the fight.

  Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims

  11:39 AM, April 25, 2038

  In the haze of smoke and confusion, Leonard wasn’t quite sure where things had gone wrong. Thirty seconds earlier, he had been standing at the bottom of the stairwell next to Nancy, watching as the four crewmen launched explosives onto the second bridge while another two crewmen ascended a ladder on the wall of the lock, climbing toward a nearby control room. Thousands of creatures were pouring across the bridge above the Arkhangelsk, but despite the massive size of the vessel and the noise made by the crewmen on her deck, the creatures on the bridge were paying them no mind. Out of nowhere, though, several events unfolded at once that radically changed the situation.