With life settling into a somewhat predictable rhythm, Megan started to look toward the future. Emerging from a cloud of despair and horror, Isla Perpetua was on track to become something good in the world—a true safe haven where the last vestiges of humanity could regroup. She vowed she would do everything in her power to allow that to happen and to give her new family every opportunity for success.
This time, she told herself, she would succeed.
Or she would die trying.
Forty-One
USS John F. Kennedy
Greenland Sea [82.282381,-20.526123]
Lieutenant Dan Watts sipped from a cup of lukewarm coffee and adjusted the bulky headset covering his ears. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. A quick glance at the digital clock on the far wall told him it was a little before four in the morning, Greenland time. With a resigned sigh, he forced his attention to the live video feed dominating the main screen of his workstation. The imagery, originating nearly five thousand miles away in the nose camera of a US Navy MQ-5N Triton drone, looked the same as always: dead.
A tone buzzed in his ears, followed immediately by a clipped, vaguely mechanical female voice. “Lieutenant Watts, my sensors indicate a course deviation of point oh-three percent. Please correct.”
Dan cursed and glared at the dome camera mounted in the ceiling above his chair. The machine, as usual, was right. He had drifted off course, but only a little. He gave the controls a slight nudge to bring his drone back in line. “Thanks, MAIDN,” he said, biting back the urge to snap at the computer. “I’m on it.”
The computer emitted a soothing tone, indicating the artificial intelligence lurking within the Massively-Aware Intelligence Defense Network was satisfied with his response.
Dan snorted and murmured, “Bitch.”
Minutes passed. A half hour. An hour. Dan stared through glazed eyes as the densely-forested landscape of the northern Yucatan Peninsula scrolled relentlessly across his screen, a never-ending sea of dull-green foliage punctuated at random intervals by the brilliant aquamarine of freshwater sinkholes and the occasional clearing filled with burnt-out structures marking the spots where people used to live. For all the weeks he had been surveying Mexico, he had yet to spot a single living soul.
“Prepare for course change in ninety seconds,” MAIDN announced.
When the designated time arrived, Dan adjusted the controls in the manner recommended by the AI. A continent away, the right wing of his drone dipped two degrees, and his aircraft banked to the north. The royal blue of the Caribbean Sea filled his screen as the Triton left land and roared out over open water.
“Where are we going, MAIDN?” Dan whispered, confused by the abrupt departure from his mission. Scouring the jungles of Mexico for the remnants of humanity had been his life for the past six months, and according to the mission briefing he had received before his shift, there had been no plans to deviate any time soon.
The computer didn’t respond.
The drone plunged into a bank of low offshore clouds, gray tendrils of vapor momentarily obscuring the video feed. Dan’s breath caught in his throat when he thought the satellite relay linking him to the aircraft had failed. But the screen soon cleared as the UAV emerged again into bright daylight.
An amber indicator winked to life in the bottom left of his screen. Dan sat up straighter in his seat, and with a flick of his wrist, he moved the system command cursor across the display, centered it on the alert, and clicked. A message box appeared beside his pointer:
Thermal imaging indicates current human activity.
3Km NNW.
With trembling hands, Dan reached up and pressed the priority transmit button on his headset.
The computer answered, “Yes?”
“Patch me through to the commander,” Dan said.
“I’m sure I can assist you with—”
Dan gritted his teeth. “Just put me through. Now.”
The line went silent, then Lieutenant Commander Briggs said, “What is it, Watts? This better be good.”
Dan detected a drunken slur in Briggs’s voice. Despite Briggs being located only four decks above him, Dan hadn’t seen the man in months. “Sir, I have a situation here.”
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
Dan glanced at his screen. “We have contact, sir. MAIDN is taking us out to sea.”
The clatter of fingers banging against a keyboard came loud and clear through the headset.
“I’m grabbing your screen,” Briggs muttered as he tapped into Dan’s video feed on his own workstation.
“Take her down, Lieutenant,” Briggs said, sounding more sober. “Nice and easy, son.”
Dan took full manual control of the UAV and set the Triton on a gradual descent from eighteen thousand feet to five thousand feet—close enough to see the ground with the naked eye.
The drone descended, lancing through the dense tropical air like a spear. An island filled the screen. More palm trees, Dan noted absently. An overhead map appeared in the center of the screen, showing the outline of the island and the relative position of the UAV. Dan eased back on the throttle, slowing the aircraft almost to a stall as he drew within a mile of the shoreline. Then, once he found what he was looking for, he accelerated.
The Triton darted across the narrowest part of the island—a strip of sandy soil less than a hundred yards wide—then was once again over open water.
“Did you get that, MAIDN?” Dan asked the computer.
“One second, please,” the computer responded. “Processing.”
Dan took a sip of his now-cold coffee and waited. In the brief instant the UAV had been over land, the nest of on-board sensors tucked deep inside a pod in the craft’s belly had methodically sampled the environment, collecting electromagnetic signals, air samples, and photographs of statistically unique landmarks and structures. All of that data went into the CPU, where the computer calculated a combined threat assessment and survival index. The survival index was an add-on to the system, originally developed to hunt terrorists undetected in foreign lands.
The computer said, “I estimate a little over two hundred living humans on this land mass. No industrial activity. Neutral disease profile.”
Dan almost dropped his cup. “Did you say two hundred?”
“That is correct.”
“What else can you tell me?” he asked. “Any signs of the undead?”
“I don’t have enough information to make that assessment.”
Dan’s mind raced. In all his searching, that was the first time he had encountered more than a dozen people in one place.
“Sir?” Dan said. He assumed Briggs had been listening. “Your orders?” Dan imagined the big man sitting alone in the pitch dark of his cabin, a bottle of Kentucky bourbon in one meaty fist, a smoldering cigarette in the other.
Briggs cleared his throat. “Log it and move on,” Briggs said.
A sour taste filled Dan’s mouth. “Sir?”
“Log the contact and proceed with your mission, sailor.”
“But—”
“Are my orders not clear?”
Dan swallowed. “Yes, sir. Understood.” A bone-crushing weariness settled over him. The thought of simply recording the presence of those people then just moving on made him feel sick to his stomach.
“Contact logged,” MAIDN announced.
Dan adjusted the controls, and his drone began to climb away from the island. As he watched the reading on the Triton’s altimeter mount, a thought began to form in the back of his mind. Something he had missed. Something they were all missing. He racked his brain until it finally came to him. Hope. At that very moment, he had the power to provide hope to whoever was living on that island, a hope denied him in his monastic existence on a dead aircraft carrier stranded at the top of the world.
Contact was prohibited according to the strict protocols devised by Briggs, but Dan didn’t care any more. The protocols were hopelessly antiquated. Obsolete, even. Before he could change
his mind, Dan turned the UAV on a tight arc and headed back toward the island. His plan was simple. He would go in low and close and waggle his wings. He would show those people, whoever they were, that that they were not alone, that someone knew of their existence. A smile formed on Dan’s lips, the motion exercising muscles in his face he hadn’t used in months and making his cheeks ache. His heart hammered in his chest. Sweat slicked his hands on the controls.
“Protocol deviation detected,” the computer announced, jarring Dan from his momentary state of bliss. “Disengage immediately.”
Dan’s locked his eyes on his screen as the island grew larger though the Triton’s camera view. He was almost there…
“Sailor!” Briggs shouted. “Turn around! That’s a direct order!”
Dan was about to initiate his run across the long edge of the island when the controls went dead in his hands. “Shit!” He slammed the stick back and forth but got no response.
His bird turned toward the heavens and resumed its climb.
With a shudder, Dan put his head in his hands and began to sob.
***
“Hey! What was that?” Megan stood and shielded her eyes against the sun. She pointed toward the west.
Jack grabbed the gunwale as the boat rocked violently in response to Megan’s sudden movement. “Careful!” he said. “What is it?”
Megan frowned as she scanned the sky. “I don’t know. It was a flash. A glint. Like a… like an airplane…”
Jack got to his feet and moved to stand beside her, taking care not to rock the small fishing boat any more in the process. Together, they surveyed the empty blue sky.
After a tense minute, Megan shook her head. “I could have sworn I saw something up there.”
Jack shrugged. “It was probably a bird.”
“Maybe,” Megan said. “I guess.” She gestured at the shore, a quarter mile to their west. “I’m getting hungry. Are you ready to head back in?”
“Sure.” Jack moved back to his spot. He started the motor and grabbed the tiller, angling the boat toward the shore.
With a final glance at the sky, Megan turned her thoughts to the task of cleaning the basket of fish sitting at her feet, the mysterious glint in the sky all but forgotten.
I’d like to thank all the generous people who volunteered their time to read early copies of this book: Tony and Gretchen Cooke, Mark Jaggers, Don Query, Don Simpson, Nancy Watts, and Shannon Christensen. This is a better story because of you! I’d also like to thank Lynn McNamee and her staff at Red Adept Editing Services for the painstaking task of making my prose legible. You guys rock! Glendon and Tabatha at Streetlight Graphics: as always, you captured my ideas for cover art and turned them into something beautiful. Finally, I want to give a shout out to the Wrinkle Neck Mules. I listen to a lot of music while I write, and your stuff was playing more than any others during this effort. You deserve to be huge!
williamesmont.com
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