by JK Franks
Tugging open a well-used leather duffel, he hit the jackpot. “This had to belong to a Sky Marshall!” he thought out loud. Inside were multiple pairs of 5.11 brand tactical pants and shirts—the kind favored by police and military. The technical fabrics were lightweight but tough. Also in the bag were a woven tactical belt and several pairs of good quality hiking socks. The pants and shirts were sizes well below what he normally wore, but he quickly recalled that he was now much smaller than the last time he had bought clothes. Stripping out of the filthy rags he’d been wearing for so long, he was pleased to find the new pants and shirt were an almost perfect fit. They were a bit stiff from the weather, but otherwise very comfortable. Inside the leather bag was also a small black plastic case adorned with the Taser company logo. He opened it to confirm its contents, then slipped that into his backpack along with several other items.
As darkness began to fall, Bobby finished off another of the tiny packs of peanuts and slung on his backpack. The detour to this site had been risky and cost him several hours, but he knew it had been a godsend and well worth it. He offered a silent thank you to the lives lost here and then to no one in particular: “Rest easy, Tess,” he muttered as he turned from the wreckage. He checked his GPS and began again his nightly wilderness trek.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Harris Springs, Mississippi
Kaylie was waiting on her uncle as soon as he exited the bridge. “Well?” she said at once.
“Nice to see you too, Bubbles, and yes, I’m fine.”
“Don’t be an ass, Uncle Scott, and don’t play dumb—you can’t pull it off. How’s my mom and dad?”
Scott had been dreading this conversation and had really hoped to have more time to come up with a response. He thought back to one of their conversations soon after he and Todd had brought her back to Harris Springs. He had agreed never to lie to her about anything, and she had done the same. There were many things that he wanted to protect her from, but when she asked, he had always been straight with her. He didn’t want to hurt her, and honestly, he wasn’t sure her mom was truly gone.
“Kaylie, I was able to reach your dad. At least, I’m pretty sure it was him, but it was all in code. I don’t think he’s in a safe place. All the person I was talking to could respond with were radio clicks for yes or no. It was a quick call, but I suggested a destination that should be safer. I believe he’s heading in our direction.”
“Are they okay? What about Mom?”
“It was a quick call. He didn’t respond with anything about your mom.” Technically that was not a lie, but only part of the truth. Kaylie’s face took on an expression that let him know she was processing all the ramifications of his statement.
“Oh, my God . . .” she leaned against the bulkhead.
“Don’t go there, sweetie. They need you to stay strong. You are their top priority, and now they know you’re okay. They know we are holding out pretty well down here. That has to be a relief to them.”
“It’s those fucking crazy Messengers, isn’t it?”
“Language, Kaylie,” he chided.
“Oh, come on, you know it is.” She was becoming enraged. Scott took her by the hand and pulled her out of the corridor and into an empty stateroom. She dropped onto the bed. The spring sun was shining brightly through the tropical print drapes that framed the window.
“They’re on the front edge of Messenger territory, yes. Whatever trouble they’re having, whatever reason caused them to leave the house or the bugout cabin was likely to do with that group, yes. If we’re right, though, even going south twenty miles should get him out of immediate harm.”
Shit. Kaylie had caught that. He had said him, instead of them. The look on her face let him know. He still wanted to protect her but assumed the worst might be best for her at this point. He ignored the look and went on.
“Do you remember Mr. Sanderson’s farm?”
She looked away for a second then said, “I think so, wasn’t he one of Granddad’s friends? All I remember are the cows and a big river.”
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s a large farm south of Little Rock on a creek that runs into the Arkansas River. Your dad and I used to spend a lot of time there. Our dad, your granddad, loved going there. In the summer, we would help out a bit, but mostly we played in the hay barn and fished or swam in the creek.”
“Is that where you sent Dad—I mean, them? You think it’s out of the reach of the Messengers?”
“I think it is for now. It won’t be safe there for long, but hopefully, he got the rest of what I was trying to tell him. I think they’ll be there in a few days. He should try and make contact again, hopefully, and we will be able to hear him well from there. Then they’ll head south. I believe we’ll need to come up with a plan to go meet them when they get closer.”
“Was that what you and Todd were talking about just now? It seemed pretty heated.”
“Um . . . no, we didn’t even get to that. Todd wants me to help find somebody else.”
Her look asked the question.
“DJ. Apparently, the Navy now thinks he’s somewhere out in the Gulf. They must have a hidden lab out there.” He pointed out the window to the glittering water beyond. “Don’t bother asking me anything else because that’s all I know. I’m going to see if I can figure out some possible spots for the Navy to recon.” Scott braced himself for another round of questions from his increasingly fierce niece. Instead, she stood up and hugged him.
“Thanks, Uncle Scott, you’re the best. You will never know how much I appreciate you and what you do for everyone, especially for me.” Her eyes were filled with tears, and Scott’s were as well when she let him go and then hurried down the passageway.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Scott found DeVonte covertly stalking Angel as she was inventorying the last of the vegetables. “Damn, man, will you give the girl a break?”
DeVonte looked up with that million-dollar smile. “Are you kidding me, dude? She loves me. She jus’ hasn’t come to realize it yet.”
Scott looked over at Angel who grinned and gave one of them a quick wink.
“Come on, lover boy,” he smiled, “we have to go build the Internet.”
“Well, shit, that actually sounds pretty cool. Right behind you, man.”
Scott gave DeVonte a quick rundown of the items he needed from storage. “Meet me up in the lounge. That’ll be the best place to set up as we have to place a satellite dish up top.”
The young man scampered off, eager as always to be of help, and Scott went to fetch his laptop.
Scott had used his satellite-based Internet connection rarely over the past few months. The basic reason for this was that there was nothing out there. Nearly every server on the planet was offline, and most of those still online would never again be updated. Ham radio had proven much more reliable for information, and the computer connection they had with the Navy was only useful when they decided to share something. The Internet itself only existed in theory at this point. He had meant to do a more in-depth analysis to see what else was out there. All his equipment had been moved here for that purpose, but so far, he had been too busy just surviving.
Bringing the laptop and backup batteries to the lounge, he found a long table and began setting up. DeVonte showed up a minute later with the dish and other items the list had called for. It only took about thirty minutes to get everything connected and to find the correct angle for the satellite. The connection light blinked amber for what seemed like an eternity, but finally turned green and stayed steady. “Whew, that’s good news. The satellite’s still there and taking calls.”
DeVonte looked impressed. “I don’t understand how you can use a satellite to reach the Internet. I thought that was jus’ for TV signals or cell phones.”
Scott talked as he worked. “The Internet doesn’t much care how you connect computers together . . . it can be with radio, telephone lines, cable coaxes, fiber optics or in this case, a satellite. In rem
ote areas, satellite Internet was pretty popular.
“My contract work with the DHS gave me unique access, and my computer and server connection are pretty special, but the principles behind them are still fairly basic.”
The boy watched attentively as Scott typed in a series of command lines and a screen with a DHS logo appeared. He placed his index finger on the laptop’s biometric scanner and then typed a very long password that appeared to be just random numbers and symbols.
“We’re in,” he said finally. “Now I need to find Tahir. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want. I mean, I appreciate your help, but this may take a while.”
“Are you kidding, I love this! You got the Internet, man. I’d like to sit and watch if you don’t mind.”
Scott laughed. He had forgotten briefly that his young friend was an intellectual sponge. Chances were that in a few days, he would be using this system and be better at it than Scott was. “Sit back and learn, my young Jedi.” All of this, of course, was in complete violation of Scott’s contract and security protocols, but that was irrelevant now. Before the flare, he would have been put in jail forever for doing anything like this, but it was not much of a risk anymore. Scott gave DeVonte a basic course in backchannel navigation, too, as he moved effortlessly through logs and file systems. To his credit, DeVonte interrupted only occasionally to clarify something he was unsure of.
“There you are,” Scott said. The list before him was just dates and times as well as some other numbers.
“Someone, you know’s been in the system?” DeVonte asked astutely.
“More than one person, yes, including my friend—the one I need to find. This is his ID number here.” He pointed to a series of numbers on the screen.
DeVonte pulled a notepad over. “Scroll back up a bit, Scott.” Watching the screen, he began making several notes. “Okay, next,” Scott scrolled to the next screen and came to the bottom of the log. The last entry was his current login which was several weeks old.
Scott was catching on to what DeVonte was seeing. There was some kind of pattern to Tahir’s logins, but it wasn’t obvious. DeVonte was now adding columns to the page and listing the day of the week, month, hour, minute, and second of each login into individual columns. The kid was good. Scott usually recognized patterns before anyone, but DeVonte was way ahead of him on this one.
“It’s twelve,” DeVonte muttered
“Pretty sure the answer to life and the universe is forty-two,” Scott retorted in amusement.
“No, the series.” DeVonte barely smiled. “It’s twelve, Scott. Then it repeats.”
“Which column?”
“Umm . . . minutes,” DeVonte answered.
Looking over it, Scott nodded. It took a moment for the pieces clicked in his head. “He logged in at specific times to leave me an IP address.”
“Does that help?” the boy asked.
Scott nodded again, “He basically gave me his phone number. Let’s see if anyone is home.” He entered the IP address and clicked the enter key. His screen began to slowly fill with a single image, an image he instantly recognized. Checking again, he made sure he was indeed connected to the address listed in the code. What he was looking at was a screen capture of one of the first-person shooter video games he and Tahir played back before the sun fried everything. The futuristic armor, weaponry and alien landscapes were nostalgic.
DeVonte looked puzzled. “What is that? Looks like an advertisement for a video game.”
“That’s what it’s supposed to look like. Tahir’s a smart guy. Even though he had to leave this system running he didn’t want to make it easy for anyone trying to get in.”
“So, this isn’t some Call of Duty website?”
“Wrong game entirely, but no, it’s not. I’m pretty sure it’s steganography.”
“What the fuck kind o’ dinosaur is dat?” DeVonte scoffed.
Laughing, Scott replied, “Not a dinosaur, a way of embedding information inside pictures.” He clicked to download the image to his computer, then opened it up in a photo-editing program. “First, I’m going to see if he included any geotagging coordinates. That’d let me know where the photo was taken.”
“Holy shit, that’s wild. He can code it so that you can find that out?”
Laughing more, Scott said, “No, little brother, that’s a standard feature almost all photos had embedded in them back in the day. If you had the right software, you could find the precise coordinates for any picture taken with a smartphone and lots of digital cameras. Unfortunately, Tahir covered his tracks: no tags on the photo itself.” Scott opened the photo in another program that showed line after line of code. “This is the actual data that makes up the photo. Steganography is the Greek word for “covered writing." In other words, the information is hidden in the file. I’ll likely have to try a few programs to find what’s in here. My friend is one brilliantly paranoid fuck, so it may take a while.”
It took far longer than Scott had expected to find the right program to discover the bit of code that did not belong. Then he struggled even longer before realizing the header information of the code looked familiar. Finally, he caught on that it was an encrypted and compressed file. Dragging it into yet another program to open the bit of code, he encountered a password field. He heard DeVonte say, “Shit,” but on this Scott felt he knew. He entered one of the passwords he and Tahir had used privately many times; the file opened to reveal a simple text document.
BikerBoi, you are the only one who will be reading this. I am alive and somewhat ok. I hope you are as well. I won’t go into detail re: where I am as I am sure they are looking. If you want to make contact I have set up another server. Not enough power to leave it on all the time and would not be smart. The schedule and IP are at the bottom. Use stegy images only as we need multi-levels of security to communicate. You obviously now know about Catalyst – it was all put into play after CME. Still, have access to some servers and communication protocols. Not safe to travel locally and we have food, but barely survived winter. Most water all around us is bad. My family is gone.
Sadly, much of Europe and Asia are confirmed as a wasteland. They are using high-altitude dispersal to spray something over much of the world. Unsure if it is pathogen, or hopefully a treatment. From what I have found out, I believe that most of the Catalyst reserve colonies are failing; unsure why, but the files and reports I can access seem to strongly suggest that. I know some were attacked by former military commanders turned warlords – some seemed to suggest the US Army or Navy. Seems they are moving Praetor units back to the US and into more domestic and proactive military deployments. This shit just keeps getting worse. Something else is getting ready to go down, just not sure what. Be vigilant, my friend.
Scott finished the message and let DeVonte read it as well. The boy began to talk, but Scott raised a finger. “I need to get a reply back to him while we still have a connection.” He then began crafting a response, requesting Tahir’s help in locating the possible lab in the Gulf of Mexico. Just as Tahir had done, Scott encrypted and compressed the message and embedded the code into a new image on his laptop: a new, tricked-out Trek—his dream bike. His friend would know it was from him. He uploaded the file to the address Tahir had supplied and then logged off.
Scott sat silently for a few minutes, then looked at DeVonte. “Let’s go talk to Todd.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Southeast of Little Rock, Arkansas
Bobby was out of water. His last few bottles had been filled from a slower-moving valley stream, and now even they were gone. His mouth was dry, and he fought to spit the dust and grime from between his cracked lips.
The rolling hills had finally given way to the flatlands. Here, he was closer than ever to possible safety, but also more exposed. Checking the GPS earlier had put him back on course; he had taken a wrong turn in the darkness. It was now mid-morning, and he was still walking. Sanderson’s place should be reachable by nightfall, so he wanted t
o push on through. In his scrambled mind, the Messengers were coming over the last hill now, and a band of Judges was just ahead. Bobby had come to realize he was not feeling well. Possibly it was something he had eaten or, more likely, bad water. His mind was not sharp. Something was attacking his weakened body. His steps were scuffing clumsily, and he felt alternately hot then chilled. Worst of all were the increasingly regular bouts of diarrhea and vomiting. His abdomen ached, and he was unbelievably tired.
Still, the note from the woman at the crash site kept echoing in his memory. Why was his misery any worse than hers—theirs? The thousands—no, millions—of other victims of that awful day, and the countless awful days since. Why was he alive when so many were not? When his sweet Jessie was not. His body shook. He had killed her; his hands had plunged the knife into her dying body. Had he done it simply to be kind, or had a part of him feared that the pained sounds she made would alert those searching for them? His body had no water for the tears that tried to form. Maybe he should have left her with them, with God’s Army. They would have continued to beat her, rape her . . . but she might still be alive if he had. Which was worse?
After his capture, he had worked for weeks to get assigned to the camp where Jess was taken. It was the fourth camp he had tried. The other three were so large it had taken days of cautious searching to make sure she was not there before he moved on to the next. Bobby had hoped Jess might be assigned to the food tents, or laundry, even in the ammunition reloading trailers, but deep down, he knew she’d be somebody’s bedmate by now.
