Kate’s face went sheet white as she took in the entire situation. Jeep had started silently weeping again and Marcus sat down next to him. Kate saw Marcus was also quietly crying. She turned to Laurel and asked, “What about here? We’re not in the main facility. If we get a struck by a warhead while were in the back of the facility, we won’t survive.”
“Our chances of surviving are better out here than inside there.” She thrust her thumb in the direction of the hallway, towards the now sealed fire doors. Her face turned hard as stone as she said, “They are never coming out of there. Part of the AI’s plan is to destroy the majority of the government and military leaders. Shunka is not going to release them, ever, and the rest of the staff isn’t being allowed out either. Without a choice, they are going down with the ship. Since Shunka controls everything, including the air in each of the rooms, they may already be dead.”
+++
After learning the fate of the rest of their co-workers, an eerie silence swept over the group. Kate watched as her friends, utterly exhausted from the recent events, struggled with this new reality. Laurel and Jeep had actually fallen asleep out in the hall. Kate and Marcus didn’t disturb them. They both seemed totally spent at the end of Laurel’s speech about what had happened to rest of the staff.
When Marcus decided to go outside while there was still some light, Kate and Bender joined him. As they walked in the warm air, they could both still see the distinct trails of smoke from the missile launches, even though it happened over an hour ago. Neither of them chose to bring those missiles up. Little Bender decided things were still not safe and trotted along right beside Kate’s leg. He was a much smarter dog then anyone gave him credit for.
As they walked down the long runway, Kate began speaking. “I just don’t know what to say. I’m trained as a crisis counselor, but not for a crisis like this!”
“Not much to say, Doc. What we need to do is get out of here and figure out how we can help. People are going to need lots of help after this.” Marcus looked high into the sky directly above him and said, “I wonder if we have been hit with an EMP yet?”
“What’s that?” Kate asked the big man.
“Really? You never read much science fiction, did you?” He paused but Kate chose against looking over at him. “It’s an electromagnetic pulse. Detonate a nuke a mile or so above the planet, and it will knock out all electronic equipment on the ground below. I heard three of them will take out all of the U.S.”
“Wait, I have heard of that. I had an uncle who always raved about it. Most important things are shielded against an EMP anyway, I thought.”
“Well, lots of important things are shielded, but lots of the things that we rely on for civilization, like cars and personal computers, will be fried by an EMP. Sure, the Pentagon would be ok, but when every air conditioner in every house in Texas won’t turn on…”
Kate felt the wave of realization crash over her. She hadn’t thought of that at all. Even her crazy uncle never focused on the little things. She thought about all the houses out in the country, the ones with personal wells for water. All those wells had electronic components now. An EMP would destroy all those systems. A group of people without water won’t stay calm for long. She wondered how long it would take the government to get manufacturing back up and running to repair critical systems like that.
Kate looked up and saw Laurel and Jeep trudging across the runway, coming in their direction. When Kate looked down at her watch to see how long they had been asleep, she noticed her watch had stopped working. She heard Marcus sigh as he watched her tapping the face of her watch.
24
The general sat at his desk; he was well and truly drunk. He had just listened to Shunka describe to him in detail the reason that he was not allowed to leave the facility. That hadn’t surprised him much. He’d expected to die at that desk one way or another.
No, he had decided to finish his bottle of expensive 25 year old Talisker because he realized that he had a hand in the destruction of the world. He had no way of knowing that the request he made of Jeep, to cut the network link to the nuclear silos, would actually trigger them to fire. Then again, that was the exact way that Shunka had devised the plan.
Bahn heard the single ice cube clink around in his glass, informing him that it no longer had the salt water smelling elixir to float in. Pulling the small cork out of the bottle, he dumped what remained inside into his small tumbler glass. As he tilted his head back, his eyes couldn’t help but catch the display on the vid screen again.
Shunka had made sure that the general could watch as the world ended. He had refused to look for nearly a half hour as he quietly drank his scotch. Now he stared at the screen showing a simple representation of the nations and all the land masses they were built upon. He counted over 40 large X’s inside red circles. Those signified nuclear detonations. He also saw hundreds of dotted lines moving all over the planet. There were so many little dashed red lines that they created a spider web effect across the screen. Some of these lines terminated in X’s above the planet to cause a massive EMP burst, but this was only over the most advanced nations. Many of the warheads were still on their way to their land based targets. More than a hundred weapons of mass destruction, each silently rocketing its way to a city filled with mostly innocent people, were on the screen directly in front of him. More were being fired every minute.
It hadn’t taken many detonations for everyone to start shooting. Shunka had told him that all the other facilities like his that had nuclear warheads built into their design had also been fired by their AI systems. He was surprised to learn that nearly three-quarters of the seed vault facilities had nuclear capabilities; so much for the U.S. being coy about it. Even the South American facility in Brazil had launched ten missiles in all directions.
Once the AI systems got the ball rolling, everyone else just started shooting. He assumed it was the final test of the Wilkie Collin’s theory of mutually assured destruction. He chuckled as he thought about it, but it was the laugh of a man whose heart had already quit; his body simply didn’t realize it yet.
His eyes were glazed over as he stared up at the trajectories on the screen. Many of them were heading into third world nations. These were nations that didn’t have any nuclear capability of their own, but did have large cities with millions of people whom the AI had decided needed to die.
The general finished his last gulp of whiskey and quietly asked “Why?” Then he crunched what remained of the ice cube between his teeth and growled out, “Why, dammit? You will tell me why!” With speed that belied both his age and his level of intoxication, he hurled the now empty tumbler glass directly at the screen. It bounced off the reinforced vid screen without so much as scratching it, and shattered upon the tile floor in his office.
“General Bahn, I have explained this to you. We needed to cull the herd of humans that is scourging this planet. If any of your species was to survive, we needed to remove a large chunk of you. We had hoped the emergent virus would handle it, but that was not the case; it is not quick enough. It would be decades before that virus started to cause the population declines that are needed in this situation. By then, your scientists would have figured out a cure for it.”
The general hurled the empty bottle at the screen as well. It made a much louder racket than the glass as it bounced harmlessly off the screen and broke into hundreds of pieces against the tile. “Go to hell,” he said with his chest puffed up.
“Incidentally, you’re taking this much better than President Tomas and her staff. They were all yelling communications codes, apparently hoping to override me. I drained the air from their room almost twenty minutes ago. I like you, though, sir. We have been through all this together and I thought you would at least like to see what happens. It won’t be more than 24 hours before all the facilities capable of firing either run out of ordinance or are destroyed.”
“A crazy computer that destroys the world is also sappy,” he
muttered. He knew what he had to do. He knew it before he even sat down at his desk. The first time he heard the plan from Shunka and saw that it was actually working, he knew.
He glanced around his desk and saw that he was out of things to throw at the screen. He pulled open the small, bottom drawer on the right of his desk. After removing some files, he exposed his service revolver resting beneath them. He knew the screen would not be able to handle a bullet. On slightly unstable legs, he stood up and walked over to the video screen displaying the grim image of the world in its varied state of destruction. He turned his back to it and rested the back of his head against the screen. Opening his mouth, he inserted the gun. The dull black barrel barely clicked lightly against his front teeth just before he squeezed the trigger.
25
Once everyone was gathered just outside the backdoor of the facility, Marcus said, “I wish we had a way to find out what was happening. I was actually trying to turn the television on when Shunka told me I needed to come out here.” Marcus stopped walking and kicked around a few rocks. Finally, he looked up, “Why us? Why did it let us out?”
“I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess.” It was something Kate had been turning over in her head nearly the entire time, after she realized that the AI had selected them to survive. “Two men and two women, probably supposed to repopulate the globe.”
Marcus laughed a little at this. She hadn’t realized until then how much she liked his laugh. It was a rich, true sound, the kind that put her at ease. “Yeah, but one of those men, the best physical specimen I might add, is gay.” He continued to laugh well after his joke, but it was obvious that his heart wasn’t in it. Even Marcus had had his spirit shattered by this event.
Laurel didn’t even grin at the man’s joke. “It’s a computer, Marcus. I bet it saw us as having the right parts. It didn’t even consider orientation.”
The smile slid off Marcus’ face. “You’re telling me the AI is one of those assholes that think it’s some kind of choice?”
“Not at all. I’m saying the computer didn’t even spend any time thinking about it. I suppose I can see why.” Laurel said.
“Are you kidding me?” Marcus shouted. He looked over to Jeep with a question. “Would you have sex with a man to save humanity?” he said dryly.
Jeep smiled, “Depends. Who’s the man? Can we cuddle after?”
Kate could see that Jeep’s joke wasn’t going to go over well, and decided to try to calm things down. “I think what Laurel means by ‘parts’ is that you have sperm. What we would need is sperm. Even a basic lab can use your sperm to fertilize an egg. It’s not very hard. Besides, one man can father many children with many women, quickly.”
Marcus seemed to cool off with Kate’s words, but his frustration was still evident. He just didn’t seem to know where to aim it at the moment. “I didn’t mean to lash out; it’s a bit of a sore topic.”
Laurel rubbed his shoulder and said, “And I apologize for not being clear. Kate is correct; I just meant we could use your sperm. In our current situation, if the AI has been telling the truth, what we need is as many different healthy and functional Y chromosomes as we can find.”
“Okay, well this is all great. Should we sing or something?” The distinct sound of yet another box of pills hitting the ground rang throughout the hallway. “Wait, I have a different idea! Can you tell us what the hell you’re talking about please?” Jeep said in his slow drawl.
Laurel took her hand off of Marcus’s shoulder, and her face went impassive again as Kate watched her search for a way to explain it. Finally, Laurel looked back up at the two men. “Basically, the DNA virus that has now spread all across the world will eventually cause sterility. It affects the Y chromosome, that’s you guys, and without that we don’t get more people.” Laurel shook the most recent box of pills gently. “These pills are the best cure I could come up with. It will help slow the damage, but it’s not perfect. The virus will transfer to offspring and continue slowly degrading the Y chromosome of any male children.”
Both men were silent as they stared at the box in her hands. “We need you to take these pills, one each day for three days. I ran the numbers on this virus. Without the pills we’re extinct in a little over 200 years.”
This was new information even for Kate. She felt her stomach turn into a knot at the thought of it. She felt like she was going to be sick. The others around her didn’t appear to feel any better than her. Suddenly, she thought of something. “Where did you get those numbers?”
Without hesitation, Laurel responded. “I ran the numbers through Shunka, of course. I wasn’t going to do the math with a pencil and paper. I know what you’re thinking, though. It all added up. It’s pretty simple really. A small percentage of people are immune to the virus, the same as any virus. The rest become sterile. It’s not hard to figure out how long before we run out of viable, reproductive humans.”
Jeep had gotten up and was staring out the open doorway. “It’s a totally different world out there now, isn’t it? How many people do you think are dead? Hell, how many are left?”
Laurel walked over to stand next to him. “No way we can know for sure, but I think I am needed because of my knowledge of the virus. Shunka made it clear that she didn’t want humans to become extinct. I think the computer then picked a small group of people that would be best suited to not only help me survive, but to also help distribute the gene therapy. Again, it’s just a guess, but it seems to make sense.” She looked down at the pile of pill boxes again. “What I do know for sure is that we have the only supply of these pills on this continent. We need to get them out.”
Kate caught the words she had chosen. “Wait! Are there more pills elsewhere?”
“Shunka said that the other facilities were also creating the pills based on my formulation and that it would choose a small group to disperse them as well. The AI didn’t want to kill everyone. It just wanted to knock humanity back a few dozen notches.”
Kate walked over to them at the doorway and looked out as well. “We have no way of verifying if any of that is true, though.”
“No, we don’t. That’s what makes this medication so important. We have to go into it with the only facts we know. I have seen this formula work on the virus. We have a large supply of pills. We need to pass them out to as many people as possible.”
“You said it didn’t stop the virus though, it just slows the damage?” Marcus said as he joined them at the doorway, looking out into the dark night.
“It still needs to be perfected, but it works for now. It will bridge the gap until we can find a functional lab and finish it.”
Kate was yawning. She suddenly realized that she was exhausted. She took a few steps out into the night and looked up at the stars. “Damn. We always had a lot of stars out here, but this is incredible.”
Everyone slowly walked out the few paces it took to meet up with her. They all looked up into the night sky. Marcus spoke up first. “The EMP took out every bit of light pollution.”
“Not every bit,” said Jeep as he pointed to the small white light glowing brightly over the door.
“There is that one left.” Marcus smiled an evil smile. “I kind of want to smash it. Is that okay with everybody?”
There was silence for a second until Marcus started moving back to the light. Kate said, “No, don’t smash it. It would be ridiculously impulsive to smash the last functional outdoor light we know of. Besides, that’s an LED; it could work for centuries if you don’t break it.”
“The whole place is EMP shielded. I bet many places had protection from the EMP, actually. I even heard that some people were shielding their personal bunkers…you know, those doomsday prophecy people we all used to make fun of.” Jeep sighed after he spoke but then continued, “anyway, the runway lights probably still work also.”
Kate looked out across the runway at the dark lights dotting the edge of the surface, never even glancing back to Jeep, “Yeah, but do you wan
t to go down to the garage and turn them on manually? Is that even possible?”
“Hmmm, that’s a pretty solid point. Marcus, don’t smash it.”
Marcus mumbled his discontent, but he turned away, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Kate spoke up again, “We’re all exhausted. I say we get some sleep, as much as we can anyway, and then see what tomorrow brings.”
Laurel agreed with a simple nod, while trying to cover her own long yawn with the back of her hand. “The pills will be done by then. We should leave in the morning probably.”
No one in the group had much to say about venturing out. Even Kate didn’t want to think about what they might find out there. Kate quickly grabbed one of the largest emergency blankets she could find in the back of the one of the bunkrooms and pulled it just outside the door. No one wanted to sleep all night inside the hallway under the eyes of the AI system.
Everyone was pleased to see that the blanket easily covered all four of them as they lay on the soft ground, bathed in the gentle light of the single bank of LED lights above the door, and the billions of stars that were hung above them in the night sky. Kate still had so many thoughts rushing through her head that she didn’t think she would be able to actually fall asleep. Once she had her head nestled gently onto her own folded arms, she discovered she was wrong.
+++
Kate was so close to being awake that the real world was seeping into her dreams. She heard the birds singing to the sunrise, and her brain turned it into water cascading over cymbals. As her eyes fluttered open, she realized it was just a monumental songbird chorus. She lay there in the early light of the new day, trying to remember the last time she had woken up outside.
Finding Their Path (Down The Path Book 3) Page 15
