Kat and Die Wolfsschanze

by Michael Beals

  The first sergeant dug in the back of his Humvee. “Here, take this. I know it’s heavy, but that’s the smallest size I’ve got.” Rachel hooked her arms through the Interceptor Multi-Threat Body Armor tactical vest, straining hard to keep her back straight and not hunch under the 35 pounds of steel-backed ballistic plates.

  Dixon took one as well and frowned at the dark stains on the neck flap of the Kevlar lining. The first sergeant met his gaze and set his jaw. “I wish we had a medic earlier.” He clapped Dixon on the shoulder. “I’ve got a combat life saver bag in the back. It’s not a complete medkit, but that’s better than nothing—”

  “Contact!” Tracers from the artillery unit’s dozen machine guns ripped out and spotlighted the threat behind them.

  Dixon didn’t bother turning around. He just reached into the Humvee and snagged an M4 rifle. Before he could insert a magazine, the nearest M109 howitzer and ammo carrier exploded. The blast wave punted him a good five meters in the air.

  Dixon squirmed on his back like a drunk beetle, fighting the urge to give in to his shrieking brain and just pass out. The thin tunnel of his vision narrowed to a bright pinprick. A familiar scream on the far side of reality brought him back to this world at the last second. Despite his nausea, he managed to hike himself up on his elbows.

  Ten feet away, Rachel slithered out from under the first sergeant. What was left of him, at any rate. The old man’s tight embrace was the only reason she wasn’t a charcoal-roasted hunk of meat as well. Some black, flying thing zoomed past Dixon. Several National Guard vehicles farther away blew apart in its wake. Dixon paid the slaughter no mind while he hustled over to Rachel. He snagged the combat lifesaver bag, little more than a trauma-oriented first-aid kit, out of the Humvee without slowing.

  Rachel wrapped her arms around Dixon when he slid next to her. Her voice was a faint squeak.

  “Peter, he saved me. Why? He didn’t know me!” Rachel was in full calculator mode now. Dixon slapped a dressing on the charred flesh of her arm. The blackened meat slid off, revealing Rachel’s pink skin underneath.

  It wasn’t her burnt flesh.

  Dixon grabbed her head as she peered down at the source of the gut-wrenching, scorched hair scent. “Shh. Don’t look. It’s all right. You’re fine. Take steady breaths.”

  He held Rachel’s head firmly and forced her to gaze away while he wiped the first sergeant’s melted remains off her body. She was in enough shock already.

  The last surviving howitzer snapped off a cannon blast as the grim reaper above hovered in place. Against all odds, the direct fire hit the enemy machine a couple hundred yards away. Half of the flying death dealer disintegrated. The rest spun end over end and crashed somewhere inside downtown Palatka.

  Rachel whooped and Dixon fired off a prayer of thanks. Not at killing the attacker, but at Rachel’s reaction. He could stop someone’s bleeding or set a broken bone, but he didn’t have a clue what to do if the girl shut down emotionally. Dixon helped Rachel to her feet, while thanking God she was truly her cold-blooded mother’s daughter.

  “Come on, let’s move—”

  Yet another shockwave knocked them both on their asses. Dixon gritted his teeth at the mushroom cloud rising over the crash site and engulfing most of Palatka. “Sons of bitches are even deadlier when dead.”

  The last surviving howitzer and ammo carrier clanked past. None of the crews paid them the slightest attention as Dixon shoved Rachel into the damaged Humvee. The engine rattled like a broken pinball machine, but the old workhorse cranked up on the first try.

  “Well, relying on the government wasn’t a part of the plan, but maybe we ought to try that refugee camp, huh? For a little while. Should at least be more soldiers there.”

  Rachel slid deep into the seat beside him and hugged herself. She wiped her face and grimaced at all the burning hulks around them.

  “Ya, but is that a good thing?”

  Somewhere Over the Eastern Saudi Arabian Desert

  “I’m sure they’re fine, Kat. Whatever’s going on, Florida has got to be too far out of the way to mess with.” Sergeant Michaels squeezed Kat’s shoulder. She flipped over the Kevlar helmet in her lap, hiding the photo inside. It was one of her favorites. A rare picture where Rachel actually smiled at Peter. Kat sniffled. The hell if she’d let these guys see her cry.

  “Ya, ya. Of course.” She shoved the pain down and patted his knee. It was good to see her old battle buddy talking again, even if he struggled with something in his eye as well. “Hey, don’t you worry either. Hunkered down back at the base, your girlfriend’s the safest of all.”

  “Tina isn’t at Fort Bragg. She wanted to be with her family during the last trimester. They live in Queens. Just a few miles from Manhattan.”

  “Oh God, Mike! I didn’t know. I’m so sorry…” Michaels shook her sympathetic hand away and changed the subject. He stared out the viewport at a long line of headlights fleeing along the highway below. With the Osprey barely a hundred feet off the ground, they couldn’t see far, but the river of refugees stretched to the horizon.

  “What do you think that’s about? There’s nothing south of here but desert for a thousand kilometers. Where could they all be going?”

  Kat whispered as loud as possible without waking the snoring civilians. They’d been through enough already. “Does it matter? Wherever the natives are heading, it’s safer than any city. I wonder if they’re looking up and cheering for us, or saying a prayer.”

  Michaels just grunted and glanced up at the smoky sky. “When the hell is sunrise around here?”

  Kat licked her lips and stared at the never-ending twilight. “Should have been an hour ago.”

  One of the civilians nearby wasn’t asleep. He lifted a borrowed uniform cap from his face and sat up. Unlike the other Westerners they’d freed, mostly young journalists and even younger aid workers, the wind-blasted wrinkles on this guy’s visage spoke to a long life spent outdoors.

  “This is our new dawn. Oh, down here by the equator we might get a few hours of real sun around high noon, but it’s going to be a long winter for the rest of the world.”

  Kat cocked an eyebrow. “What are you talking about? It’s only June.”

  His leathery face broke out in a rueful smile.

  “Nuclear winter is its own season.”

  Michaels shook his head like a pit bull. “I call bullshit on that. Nuclear winter is completely theoretical. There’s no real world proof. Besides, didn’t you hear Smith? The bastards are dropping rocks from space, not nuking us.” He turned his attention back to Kat.

  “That’s why I’m saying you and the captain are wrong. Neither the Russians nor Iranians could be behind this. It’s got to be the Chinese. Didn’t they land on the moon last year? Probably a cover story for setting up a firing base to throw moon rocks at us. I read a book about it once. Something called ‘The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.’ I bet these so-called ‘ships’ up there are just secret space stations. Forward observation posts for their meteorite artillery, or something like that.”

  The civilian snickered. “China? Don’t be so naïve. I seriously doubt any human was behind these attacks. In many ways, meteorites are worse than nukes. The ground impacts toss up far more ash into the sky than any airburst thermonuclear detonation. Even if some foreign power had targeted America exclusively with these rocks, the effects would still rock the world. We all share the same atmosphere. No way to escape. If the strikes are wiping out entire cities, like you say, then each blast must have kinetic energy in the double-digit megaton range. That’s far more powerful than your typical nuke. Only a few dozen going off would haze out the sun for days, worldwide. A few hundred, weeks likely. A few thousand and… well, look what h
appened to the dinosaurs.”

  Kat turned up her nose and fiddled with her bayonet hilt. “You seem to know a lot about this. Are you CIA as well, Mr…?”

  “Ha! Hell no. Name’s Brian Jenkins. I’m an archeologist. I was leading a team excavating the ruins of a lost city-state in southern Oman when the terrorists attacked. The SOB’s slipped over the border in the middle of the night and hit our camp in a supposed secure zone. They just walked in and killed everyone. With guns, knives, sometimes bare hands, like it was a contest to see who could be more creative…”

  His eye twitched a little. “They only spared me for the ransom money. Must have assumed ‘Doctor’ in my title meant I was rich. I can’t thank you folks enough for getting me out of there. Compared to that hellhole, this new world is a walk in the park.”

  Jenkins closed his eyes, beating down some memory. “Anyway, the place we were studying died out during the last such atmospheric event the planet witnessed. Have you ever heard of the ‘Year Without Summer,’ back in 1816?”

  Blank faces stared back at him. Jenkins had never given a lecture to a more attentive audience. “Something similar happened. The sky, worldwide, was greyed out for months. In the northern latitudes, nothing but a light haze, even at noon, hinted that the sun was still there. We’re talking stuff straight out of the worst parts of the Bible. Global temperatures plummeted. There were widespread crop failures throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Rapid climate change too, with dry areas experiencing sudden flooding and the tropics suffering extensive droughts. The mini-apocalypse lasted for over a year, spawning famines, pandemics, riots and even a few wars. Historians say a 100,000 people starved to death in Ireland alone. Millions died around the world. And you know the craziest thing? The whole disaster was caused by a single volcanic eruption far away. Mount Tambora in Indonesia, to be exact. The only difference is that this time nature isn’t our enemy. I’m willing to wager that not even the worst elements of mankind are behind this calamity. Which leaves only one logical explanation.”

  All three gazed out the window at the panicked refugee storm below. Jenkins pointed up at the cloudy sky. “The whole planet is going to suffer the consequences of this bombing. Whoever or whatever did this doesn’t care about money, politics, religion or any of that nonsense. They clearly have a beef with the entire human race.”

  Kat guffawed. “What are you saying? You think we’re at war with alie—”

  The sun came out. An artificial one, at least. Michaels whistled. “Holy shit! I guess we aren’t completely defenseless!”

  The southwestern sky lit up in an ever-expanding supernova. No mushroom cloud; this was clearly an exoatmospheric nuclear detonation. The expanding fireball cycled between shades of yellow and orange before settling on crimson. The blood red nova kept racing out until it smothered the entire horizon.

  Michaels whooped again. “Hell ya! Whoever the enemy is, looks like we nailed ‘em. One ship down, five to go!”

  Kat cheered out the window like everyone else. Jenkins nudged her shoulder, waving a finger at the shapes falling from the red sunburst.

  “Damn. How big do you think those chunks are?” She couldn’t begin to guess how large the falling objects burning through the atmosphere were. The fact that any debris could survive a nuclear blast shook her world.

  “Hell if I know, but if we can see them a couple hundred miles away… well, I’m just glad we’re not the only ones left in this fight!”

  The pilot’s voice buzzed over the intercom. “We’re thirty minutes out from Camp Arifjan.”

  Michaels shot Kat an exasperated look. “He didn’t say if they’re expecting us. Have you had any luck on the net? We should be close enough by now.”

  Kat played with her worthless radio yet again.

  “No go, but that’s probably a side effect of the nuke. With all the electromagnetic interference, I’m surprised we can even communicate with the next chopper.”

  She forced herself to believe her own excuse.