Collective Retribution

by Edwards, D. S.

  “Electromagnetic pulse. Fries anything with an electrical circuit. That weird burned-plastic smell? It’s burned wiring.”

  “How, why, who?”

  “Nuclear attack!”

  “Nuclear…what do you mean?”

  “There’ll be time to explain later. Stay alert!”

  “Shouldn’t we see if we can help?”

  “There’s nothing we can do. We’re better off taking care of our families and preparing for what’s coming.”

  Palmer frowned and stopped. “These people need help!” he shouted. “We can worry about getting home later. Besides, how are we going to get home if no vehicles run? It’ll take us at least a month to walk.”

  Nirsch also stopped and turned to address Palmer.

  “I feel bad for these people, I really do,” he said, breathing harder now. “But there is nothing we can do for them. We’d be better off securing ourselves a way home. I have spent the last thirty some years of my life bleeding and fighting for every person in this country, and my family has suffered for it. As of this moment, the world has forever changed. One day my country may need me again, but I am going to focus on my family and their needs now. I will do what I can to help those here who will be helping others, but make no mistake about it, from now on, my family comes first.”

  10

  HIGHWAY 26, EIGHT MILES EAST OF PRINEVILLE, OREGON

  4:10 P.M. PST

  AMANDA COLLINS DROVE A RENTED CHEVY BLAZER THROUGH heavy snowfall. She and her husband were headed for Mitchell, a small town on the other side of the Ochoco Mountains. Beside her, Larry rolled down his window and took a deep breath. So did Amanda. The smell of sagebrush, juniper trees, and a hint of cow manure was fantastic, but the breeze that quickly filled the cab was cold enough to take her breath away.

  “Brrrr,” Amanda said as she glared at Larry. “Roll up your window!”

  Larry complied. “I love it here,” he said. “We are definitely moving to Central Oregon when we retire. If for nothing else, at least for the Chinese food.” After landing in Redmond, they’d stopped in Prineville to eat. They didn’t come through the area often, but when they did, Larry had to have his Chinese food from Gees.

  Amanda looked over at Larry. His face beamed with the boyish charm she had first fell in love with. Sometimes that innocence seemed out of place coming from his well-muscled six foot frame. She used to joke with her sister when she first started dating Larry, that God had attached Mathew Broderick’s head to Vin Diesel’s body. The sun had broken through the clouds and was sinking behind the Cascade Mountains as they passed Ochoco Reservoir and started up into the timber. The snow quit falling. Everything was white and shimmering in the twilight. It was as if the world had fallen asleep, wrapped up in a thick snowy blanket.

  The road grew icy as they climbed. Soon they reached the summit. Amanda decreased her speed to 30 miles per hour. The Blazer thermometer showed eighteen degrees outside. Even with the defroster on full blast, the windows began to ice up.

  “You might have to get out and scrape the windows in a minute,” Amanda said. “I’m starting to have a little trouble seeing.”

  “Okay. Pull over in the next wide spot. You want me to drive?”

  “No, I’m doin’ fine.”

  “You ever wonder what all this country looked like a hundred and fifty years ago?” Larry said. “How wild it must have been before it was settled?”

  Amanda squinted through the front windshield. Snow had started to fall again in giant flakes. She could barely see the mountain rising on her left and the guardrail on her right. “What?”

  “This country, Oregon. I wonder what it was like before it was settled. Sometimes I think I was born a hundred and fifty years too late.”

  Amanda smiled. “That was a pretty hard life. People had to travel on foot or horseback. They had to live out in the elements. They didn’t have the luxury of an enclosed vehicle with a heater and heated leather seats. Seems like it would’ve been pretty miserable to me.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Larry said. “But think of how wild and beautiful it must have been—Indians, animals that had never seen a human, wolves and grizzly bears running around.”

  “You’re such a daydreamer.”

  “Maybe. It’s just that I always get nostalgic when we—”

  Suddenly the Blazer’s interior and outside lights went out.

  “What did you do?” Larry said.

  “Nothing! It just died!”

  “Pull over!”

  “I’m trying. The brakes are hard to push, and the steering, it’s—”

  Larry grabbed the steering wheel and turned it hard left toward the uphill side of the road. “Brake! Step on the brakes!”

  Amanda stomped on the brake pedal with both feet. The Blazer started to lose traction and slide sideways. They skidded one hundred eighty degrees, slammed into the guardrail, bounced off, and shot back across both lanes, spinning as they went. The Blazer hit the ditch sideways on the uphill side of the road and tipped over onto the driver’s side.

  The sound of twisting metal and breaking glass was deafening. The passenger side window exploded, covering Larry with broken glass, mud, and stinging snow. Both airbags deployed, driving shards of broken glass and dirt into Larry’s face and forehead. They were both stunned. Neither spoke for a couple of minutes.

  “There was nothing I could do,” Amanda finally said. “Everything just quit. I couldn’t steer, I couldn’t see. I had no control.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. How about you? Are you hurt?”

  “My face stings, and my neck’s a little sore, but I think I’ll live.”

  “Can you get off me?”

  Larry had partially landed on Amanda. His seatbelt had held him back and kept him from completely crushing her with his full 220 lbs. He pulled himself back to his side of the car, braced his feet against the dash, and pushed his back into his seat. He undid his seat belt and held himself in an awkward position.

  “Can you get your seatbelt off and climb into the back?” he said. “I’m not sure how long I can hold myself up here.”

  Amanda undid the belt and climbed into the backseat just as Larry’s strength gave way. He fell into the driver’s compartment with a grunt. His ribs slammed into the steering wheel, knocking the wind out of him.

  “That’s gonna hurt later,” he said after a minute. “Dig around back there and see if you can get my radio out of my bag. We need to call for help, and I’m pretty sure we don’t have cell service up here.”

  Amanda scraped slimy Kung Pao and fried rice leftovers off their luggage and felt around for Larry’s radio. She handed it up to him. He switched on the power button and tapped it on the steering wheel.

  “It’s dead. Try and find our cell phones.”

  Amanda rummaged again, found the phones, and tried the power buttons. “They’re dead too. I’ll see if I can find a flashlight.”

  “I have one in the outside pocket of my carry-on.”

  Larry watched Amanda pull out the flashlight. “This doesn’t work either,” she said. “It makes no sense. Everything electrical is dead.” She looked out the back window of the Blazer. “You know what? Those farms down in the valley are dark now. There’s no lights anywhere.”

  “We’re gonna’ have to get someplace warm while we wait for help. See if you can get the back open. We’ll walk down to one of the farms in the valley.”

  Amanda opened the back end of the Blazer and was greeted with an icy blast of snow. They bundled up the best they could with extra clothes from their luggage. Larry strapped on his service weapon and checked the load. Then they moved across the road, climbed over the guardrail, and started walking.

  11

  KLAMATH FALLS AIRPORT

  4:45 P.M. PST

  FLAMES FROM EXPLOSIONS LIT UP THE DARKENING SKY AROUND Nirsch and Sheriff Luke Palmer. “I need to get home to my family,” Nirsch said, “and I don’t plan on wa
lking. This base will have vehicles that were stored underground for an emergency like this. Every base in the U.S. has been semi-prepared for this since the Cold War. In the early eighties, large parking structures were built underground. They are completely EMP-proof. Large quantities of fuel are stored there. Some of the larger bases have aircraft stored underground, as well as communication satellites ready for launch. Within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, the U.S. military will be up and running, at half capacity.”

  Nirsch clapped Palmer on the shoulder and started jogging toward the administration building. He heard the sheriff coming after him.

  “They’re not just going to give us an armored personnel carrier,” Luke called.

  “I plan on taking one and as much fuel as we can carry. I also plan on securing radio equipment and more weapons.”

  They reached the main building and were stopped by a guard at the front door. His eyes looked as big as dinner plates.

  “This building is on lockdown,” he said. “N-n-no one goes in or out, un-until I hear otherwise.”

  More screams filled the air behind Nirsch and Luke. “What is your name, airman?” Nirsch said.

  “Per-Perkins, sir.”

  Nirsch pulled out his identification and held it in the terrified airman’s face.

  “Well, Airman Perkins, I am Levi Nirschell with the NSA. I am on direct orders from the president. I am entering this building. You can hold the door for me or you can stand down. Either way, we are going in.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that sir. N-now step back, or I will be forced to remove you.”

  Airman Perkins shakily drew his pistol and took aim just as the door flew open behind him. An officer appeared.

  “Stand down, airman,” he said. “Colonel Snider wants Mr. Nirschell in the communications center ASAP.”

  Airman Perkins reholstered his sidearm and stepped aside.

  They entered the building amidst a flurry of activity. Base personnel were setting up chemical lights, stringing wires and coax cable up and down the hallways, and handing out tactical radios.

  “Right this way,” the officer said. “The colonel is waiting.”

  In the communications center, chemical lights had been placed around the perimeter, and new fluorescent lighting was being hung from the ceiling. Several communications specialists were monitoring radios and furiously writing down information.

  A tree trunk of a man with a colonel insignia on his uniform approached.

  “Colonel Snider, I presume?”

  “You must be Levi Nirschell.”

  Nirsch shook the colonel’s hand and waved his other hand around the room.

  “This is quite impressive. I’m surprised how quickly you’ve gotten set up.”

  “We’ve been prepared for this for a long time. I just never thought I’d see it in my lifetime.”

  “How much have you been able to find out?”

  “Not everything yet. We haven’t been able to establish a link with any of our satellites, but we managed to contact Salem through the Ground Wave Communication system. We know Portland is gone. We’re still not sure about Seattle.”

  “What about bases? How many specifically targeted and how many destroyed?

  “We can only assume that any base within a large urban area would have been destroyed. We hope most rural bases like ours survived.”

  “What about the president and the joint chiefs?”

  “We are assuming the president is secure under Buckley, in Colorado. All of the joint chiefs were in the Pentagon. We haven’t been able to reach anyone in D.C. or Virginia. Either they haven’t restored their communications or they no longer exist. We are assuming the latter.”

  “Langley?”

  Colonel Snider shook his head. “Nothing from anybody on the east coast, and as far as the west goes, the only communications we’re receiving are from Salem. According to them, Portland was completely leveled.”

  “If Portland was leveled, then why did the EMP reach us here, through the mountains, and why were the satellites affected?”

  “Salem reported picking up an object on radar that originated on the ground in Portland and moved into the upper atmosphere just seconds before power was lost. This tells us, with the destruction on the ground and the EMP effects being so widespread, there had to have been at least two nuclear devices in each location.”

  The more Nirsch thought about it, the angrier he got. He could feel rage and hatred taking over. He wanted revenge. He wanted to kill. He wanted those responsible to feel the pain and desperation he was now feeling.

  “Nirsch. Nirsch!” It was Luke.

  Nirsch left the blackness and hatred behind. “What?”

  Luke pointed at him. “Your lip. It’s bleeding.”

  Nirsch had been so disconnected that he’d bitten into his lip. Blood dripped off the point of his chin and onto the floor, staining the white tiles. Colonel Snider grabbed a tissue from a box on the counter and handed it to him.

  “Here. There’s more. Reports started coming in early this morning that several governors and some of their staff members died yesterday afternoon. Tests showed they’d been infected with a type of rhinovirus.”

  Nirsch scratched the top of his head.

  “Rhinovirus. Isn’t that like the common cold?”

  “The rhinovirus is the common cold. The problem is, in this case, part of the DNA strand was removed and spliced with HIV DNA, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Langley.”

  Luke jumped into the conversation. “AIDS?”

  Colonel Snider ignored him and continued. “It was modified in such a way that the finished product was fast-acting and extremely nasty. This version of HIV attacks the immune system and kills the body’s ability to fight anything off within a few hours. Then the supercharged rhinovirus attacks unheeded. Death occurs within twenty-four hours.”

  “Holy crap,” Nirsch said. “Death by a runny nose. I know we had a program at Langley that experimented with the genetic codes of common viruses in the late nineties. But as far as I knew the project was abandoned under pressure from the international medical community. Someone must have gotten their hands on the research and finished the project.”

  “Several more government and judicial officials were also reportedly ill as of 3:30 this afternoon. That’s the last we heard.”

  “Was there any information coming out of Langley on a possible antivirus?”

  “They didn’t really have enough time to develop a serum, but they did manage to get the genetic makeup of the virus to all the military hospitals and the major epidemiology centers. Hopefully the hospitals that survived will have begun trying to develop a cure or vaccination.” Snider shook his head. “This could take months to develop, with the lack of electricity. It could take even longer to get it to the remaining population, with the crippled communications and the lack of transportation. Either way, you’d better pray you don’t contact anyone who has it.”

  Nirsch walked over to a water cooler, drew out a cup of water, and let everything sink in. His lower lip throbbed as the water passed over it.

  “What about vehicles?” he said. “How many are operational?”

  “We have twenty-five armored personnel carriers and fifteen pickups, as well as several ATVs, parked in our underground facility. There are also several generators and a lot of communications equipment.”

  I have to get my hands on some of that, Nirsch thought. “If you don’t mind, colonel, since I can’t contact the Pentagon, I’d like to make contact with the adjutant general in Salem.”

  Snider pointed to a desk in the corner of the room.

  “There’s a radio and headset you can use.”

  Nirsch walked past Luke and whispered quickly in his ear as he passed.

  “When I nod at you, get the colonel to look away from the radio.”

  Luke looked confused but nodded his head slightly.

  Nirsch sat down at the desk and made a show of powering
up the radio and tuning it to the proper frequency. He gave Luke a slight nod. Reluctantly Luke got the Col’s. attention.

  “What about local law enforcement?” Luke asked “Have you been in communication with them?”

  The colonel turned and looked at Luke to answer. “Not yet.”

  This gave Nirsch just enough time to reach over and switch the power off on the radio. He tuned out the rest of their words and pretended to be having a radio conversation.

  “Yes,” Nirsch said, “I’m with Colonel Snider now.” He nodded his head as if he was agreeing with someone on the other end. “Yes sir, the colonel is very cooperative. Yes sir, he’s sent a team to the hospital with a generator and the information on the virus from Langley. Yes. Yes. Yes sir, right away, sir.”

  Nirsch pretended to turn off the radio.

  “Colonel,” he said, “I’ll need a vehicle and some radio equipment. I am to take Sheriff Palmer to make contact with local law enforcement and deliver some of your working radios. The adjutant general wants the state police to contact him. I will also be able to assess the damage in town and report back to you. I think it would be wise to take a pickup with an ATV in the back. We don’t know how clogged the roads are and we may need to go cross-country.”

  Snider glanced at his watch.

  “Good idea. If you could drop some fresh radios off at the hospital that would help. I sent a team with a generator just after the power went, but they didn’t have extra radios. They’re right next to the state police offices. Also have the state police check in with us every two hours, starting at, say, twenty hundred hours.”

  Nirsch made eye contact with the sheriff. Luke looked confused. Nirsch winked.

  The colonel addressed a young, red-faced airman. “Airman Morgan, accompany Mr. Nirschell to the special motor pool and secure a vehicle for him. Give him whatever he needs, including fresh radios for our boys at the hospital and the state police.”

  “Yes, sir. Follow me, Mr. Nirschell.”

  The airman led Nirsch and Luke outside and across the tarmac to a small, plain-looking hangar. Once inside, they made their way to a large metal door in the center of the main room. The airman took out a ring of keys, unlocked the door, and led them down a narrow staircase, three stories underground. He unlocked a second door and led them into a massive garage. Several military vehicles were lined up along the walls: MA-TVs, M-RAP personnel carriers, Ford F-350 diesel pickups, and Polaris Sportsman 500 ATVs.