He made his feet, carefully shrugged out of his uniform shirt and pulled the bottom of his t-shirt up to cover his mouth. He stood in the swirling dust, lights blinking and swaying from the ceiling, t-shirt clamped across his mouth, breathing as shallowly as he could. The dust was so thick in the corridor that he could see only a few feet.
Somewhere, it sounded far away, an alarm began to bray. A minute or so after that as he stood trying to breath, the sprinkler system came on. In most places it was still intact, although sagging from the rock ceiling far above where mounting points had broken. In some places the pipe broke as soon as the water pressure hit it, already too damaged from the quake.
The air cleared almost immediately and the spray felt soothing against his overly hot face. He took his bearings and then staggered off down the hallway in the direction of the elevators.
Richard Pierce
Richard Pierce picked himself up from the floor. The shaking had been horrific, but the facility had held. At least so far, he told himself as he dusted his hands against his pant legs. Both palms were cut and bleeding. The hybrid composite windows that looked out on the main floor of the facility had splintered and cracked, shooting sharp pieces of glass like material all over the computer room.
He lowered himself into his seat and fought the panic that hammered at his heart: As he calmed down he began to look around the room to assess the damage.
Besides the composite glass he saw no problems. The monitors were encased in rubber, designed to survive this sort of scenario and they had. The OS was offline though. The small blinking cursor at the bottom of the screen told him it was rebooting. It would be only a matter of seconds before he knew whether the system had also survived.
The screen came up in a burst of blue, and then settled into a command line. He righted his chair and began to type. A few minutes later he had a much better idea of what had transpired and how the facility had stood up.
The entire first level was gone. Shaken to pieces and filled in with dirt and debris. The second and third levels were in bad shape. Bodies littered the hallways. An occasional lone straggler appeared through the spray of water and dust clouds that dominated the camera feeds.
One camera showed an empty elevator. It was the second bank of freight elevators that came from the surface to the bottom most levels of the facility. It was the only one that appeared to be on line and operational. He was surprised that was even possible. As he was just about to dismiss that view the elevator door parted as if nothing had happened and Major Richard Weston stepped into the elevator bay.
Blood and dirt streaked his face. His eyes were red rimed and bloodshot. He looked up into the camera. A second later his voice came through the system as he pushed the talk button on the elevator panel.
“This is Major Richard Weston to the main monitoring station. Are you on-line? I need a status report ASAP.”
Pierce hesitated. He was not the monitoring station operative. He was a code jockey, nothing more. No military rank, nothing. He hesitated a second longer hoping someone else would answer the Major, but the lights for the main and secondary stations were dead. They were off-line. There would be no answer. As he waited the channel remained silent and the Major finally repeated his message again. Reluctantly Pierce depressed his own bypass switch to answer the call.
“Major, civilian Richard Pierce, programming. The boards are dead, Major.” Pierce leaned away from the monitor and began to check other station lights. Not a single station from the top five levels was lit. There subterranean levels were lit for two stations, but neither station tied into this circuit.
“Pierce... Pierce, where are my men assigned to the monitoring stations?”
“Major... Sir, my best guess is dead, or the stations have been destroyed. I have two sub levels that are manned. Nothing else.”
“Patch me through, Pierce. Either one. Doesn't matter,” Weston told him.
“Sir... Sir I can't do that. The board isn't designed to do that. I... I can speak to them and relay information,” he shrugged helplessly. “The best I can do.”
The Major looked so long into the monitor that Pierce was sure he had lost him. The alarm for the elevator error procedure began to chime and Pierce cut it off, over riding the automatic sequence.
“Major?”
“Here... Read you. Okay, Pierce, let's shift gears... How does this bank look to get me to the surface?”
“No way, sir. That bank is probably going to return here soon, in fact. It does that when it's damaged, returns to control, and control for that unit is sub level sixteen. There is no surface above you, just debris. I have no camera shots at the exit, but I have red lights across the board from sub level four to the surface. I have one camera on the surface that looks toward the entrance. The entrance is gone, though. Nothing but churned up dirt. “
“What do you mean this will return to the bottom once more and stay there?” Major Weston asked.
“It's a safety mechanism, Major. It comes back and stays until the error messages are cleared. Major, you should probably decide soon on whether you'll be making a trip to the surface or joining us down here. I am over riding the error procedure. I can get away with that for a few minutes, but then the status will change and the elevator will freeze there,” Pierce told him.
The major swore, turned away from the camera, looking back out of the elevator. Pierce saw little. The camera angle caught only a corner of the open doors. The major looked back up at the camera, and a second later the door slid shut as he removed his foot. “Bring me down, Pierce,” he said quietly. Pierce saw the elevator lurch as he removed the over ride to allow the error sequence to repeat. He watched the levels increase as the elevator dropped into the bowels of Project Bluechip.
Public Square
Watertown New York
Pearl (Pearly) Bloodworth
The streets were clogged with snow, but the sidewalks were impassable, so she had no choice but to walk in the street.
She made her way carefully, slipping and sliding as she went. It was just before 6:30 P.M. and she might make it to work on time if she could make the next two blocks without incident.
She had been working at the downtown mission for the last several months: The night shift for the last two months. The mission night shift was an easy shift. Everything was closed down. Those who had made the curfew were locked in for the night. Occasionally there would be a little trouble between residents, but that was rare. Watertown was small, as a consequence the homeless population was small. And trouble, when it came, was usually settled long before her shift. Her shift amounted to catching up on paperwork, dispensing an aspirin or two, and being there if there was an emergency of any kind. At 4:00 A.M. The kitchen staff would be there to start their day. Shortly after that the rest of the day-shift would be in. At 6:00 A.M. The mission doors would open and the homeless would take to the streets. She would have an hour of quiet at the end of her shift, sitting and listening to the bustle from the kitchen as they cleaned up after breakfast and began to prepare for lunch.
She heard the approaching vehicle as she was stepping around a mound of melting snow and ice. It was late and there had been no traffic on this side street when she had stepped into the street at the cross walk three blocks down. The alternative was the foot deep snow and ice thrown onto the sidewalk from the plows. She would never get through that and make it to the mission on time.
The Mission was on upper Franklin street, a short walk in a straight line, or even if you had to walk around the square and start up, as she usually did, but tonight the square was packed with traffic and so she had chosen the shortcut instead. Unfortunately it was not well lit: A four block wasteland of parking lots and alleyways.
She had almost turned completely around to make sure the car had seen her when the horn blared and startled her. A second later she finished the turn, hand clasped to her throat, and watched as the car skidded to a stop and three men piled out of the back seat slippin
g and sliding in the slush, laughing.
“What's up, bitch,” one asked as he found his feet and stood staring her down. The laughter died away.
“Nice ass,” another said as he moved toward her.
She turned to the second man, the one who had just spoken, as she shrugged her purse from her shoulder, caught the bottom of it in one hand, and slipped her other hand inside. The third man, really just a boy, looked frightened as his eyes slipped from his two companions and then flitted to her. The driver leaned out the window,
“What the fuck! Get the bitch!” He was looking over the roof-line, sitting on the windowsill of the driver's door, a smirk on his too-white face.
“Yeah... How about a ride, baby,” the nearest one said. The other had finally found his feet, stopped slipping, and was skidding his feet across the slush heading in her direction. She pulled her hand from her pocket and aimed the mace canister at them. They both skidded to a stop.
The closer one, the one that had made the remark about her ass, cocked his head sideways, shrugged his shoulders and then pulled a gun from his waist band. “Yeah... Kind of changes the whole situation, don't it?” He asked.
His gun was aimed at the ground, close to her feet. She had only a split second to decide. He was less than five feet away, the gun rising from the ground, when she pushed the trigger and watched the stream leap at him. His face went from sarcastic smirk to alarm just before the stream of mace hit his nose and splattered across his face and into his eyes. A second later he was screaming. She had just turned to aim at the second guy when the world turned upside down.
She found herself tumbling sideways. Somewhere, close by, a roar began and rose in pitch as the ground below her feet began to jump and shake. She found her knees after she fell and skidded across the roadway as she tried to hold herself, but the shaking was just too hard. She collapsed back to the roadway and the relative softness of the slush and snow, her body jumping and shaking as she seemed almost to bounce across the short expanse and into the snowbank on the opposite side of the road.
The roar went on for what seemed like minutes as she tried to catch her breath and steady herself at the same time. Both seemed impossible to do, but almost as soon as she had the thought the trembling of the earth became less and a split second after that the roaring stopped. There was no silence. The sound of breaking glass, tumbling brick, blaring horns and screams in the dark night replaced the roar. Sounds that had probably been there, she decided, she had just been unable to hear them.
Pearl made her feet and stared back down the street where the car had been. The car was still there, the nose tilted upward, the back seemingly buried in the street itself. She blinked, but nothing changed. She noted the broken asphalt and churned up dirt, and realized the car had broken through the street. There was no sign of the men, including the driver that had been hanging halfway out of the window.
She drew a breath, another, and suddenly the noise and smells of the world rushed back in completely. The screams became louder. Horns blared. The ground trembled under her feet as if restless. She could smell sewage on the air. Broken lines below the pavement her mind reasoned. She swayed on her feet as the earth trembled once more, lurching as it did. She waited, but the tremble was not repeated. She sucked in another deep breath and then began to walk, slipping on the broken pavement and slush as she did.
Franklin street appeared untouched as she lurched from the side street, slipping over the broken pavement, and retching from the overpowering smell of sewer gas. She collapsed to the icy pavement, skidding on her knees and was surprise to hear herself crying as she struggled to get back on her feet.
She nearly made it to her feet before the next tremor hit, this one much harder than the last one. She bounced sideways, knees slamming into the ground, crying out as they did, but unaware of her own cries. Just as the trembling stopped she made her feet again and stood, hand clasped to her knees to steady herself, breathing hard, holding herself rigidly, wondering what was coming next. When the shaking stopped and silence flooded in she was shocked.
She finally opened her eyes, she had no idea when she had closed them, straightened from the bent posture she had found herself in, quieted her sobbing and looked around.
Forty feet away, the gray stone of the mission that had rose just past the sidewalk was no more: Churned earth had replaced it. The sidewalk was still intact, as though some weird sort of urban renewal had occurred in a matter of seconds. Her eyes swept the street and now they took in the sections where the sidewalk was missing. The entire side of the street was gone for blocks. What was in evidence was an old house several hundred feet away, perched on the edge of a ravine. Beyond that, houses and streets continued. She was on the opposite side of complete destruction, and there appeared no way to reach that side.
She turned and looked back at the side street she had come from. Churned earth, tilted pavement, the car was now gone. Farther down the short hillside that had appeared the public square seemed completely destroyed. Water had formed in the middle of the square and ran away to the north, probably toward the Black river, Pearl thought. To the west everything appeared to be intact, to the east, Franklin street stretched away untouched toward the park in the distance. Close by someone began to scream, calling for help. She took a few more calming breaths and then began to walk toward the screams: The west, angling toward the opposite end of the square.
The screams cut off all at once, and a second after that the sound of a motor straining came to her. Cycling up and then dropping. She paused in the middle of the road, listening, wondering where the sound came from. As she stood something ran into her eye, stinging, clouding her vision, she reached one hand up and swiped at it and the back of her hand came back stained with a smear of blood.
She stared at it for a second. The ground seemed to lurch, shift suddenly, and she reached her hands to her knees to brace herself once more, expecting the shaking to start again, but her hands slipped past her knees and she found herself falling, her legs buckling under her. The ground seemed to rise to meet her and she found herself staring down the length of the roadway, her face flush with the asphalt. The coldness of the ice and slush felt good against her skin: As if she were overheated; ice wrapped inside of a dishrag at the base of her neck on a hot day. She blinked, blinked again, and then her world went dark.
She floated, or seemed to, thinking of London. A hot day. She was a child again: Standing in the second floor window and looking down at the street far below. The dishrag dripped, but it felt so good against her skin. The memory seemed to float away. She was rushing headlong through a never ending stream of memories. All suddenly real again. Urgent, flying by so fast, but sharp in every detail.
Pearl had grown up on a council estate in London: When her mother had died she had come to the United States only to find herself in the Maywood projects on the north side of Watertown. From one pit to another. Just different names, she liked to tell herself. Up until a few weeks ago she had still made the trip back and forth every day, but she had found a place, a small walk-up, not far from the mission on the other side of the public square. It seemed extravagant to have her own space, but living in the downtown area suited her.
She seemed to be in both places at once. Back in her childhood, staring at the street below the window, yet hovering over her body, looking down at herself where she lay sprawled on the winter street. She wondered briefly which was real, but nearly as soon as she had the thought she found herself struggling to rise to her knees from the cold roadway, her eyes slitted, head throbbing.
In front of her a shadowed figure had appeared staggering through the ice and snow, angling toward her. She blinked, blinked again and her eyes found their focus. The man from the car, suddenly back from wherever he had been. One hand clutched his side where a bright red flood of blood seeped sluggishly over his clasping fingers. Her eyes swept down to his other hand which was rising to meet her. A gun was clasped there. Probably, her mind told
her, the same gun he had been going to shoot her with before. The gun swept upward as if by magic. She blinked, and realized then that the sound of the motor straining was louder. Closer. Almost roaring in its intensity. The gun was rising, but her eyes swiveled away and watched as a truck from the nearby base skidded to a stop blocking the road from side to side no more than ten feet from her. She blinked, and the doors were opening, men yelling, rushing toward her.
Bright light flashed before her eyes, and a deafening roar accompanied it. An explosion, loud, everything in the world. A second explosion came, then a third, and she realized the explosions were gunshots. She felt herself falling even as she made the discovery. The pavement once again rising to meet her. Her eyes closed, she never felt the ground as she collapsed onto it, falling back into the dark.
She was back standing in the window, looking out over the street. The heat was oppressive, but the ice wrapped in the rag was mothers' wonderful cure. She tried to raise it to her neck once more, to feel the coldness of it, but her arm would not come. She tried harder and the window suddenly slipped away. A man was bent toward her face. A helmet strap buckled under his chin. Her hands were somehow held at her side. The motor screamed loudly as this world once more leapt into her head. She was on the floor of the truck, vibrations pulsing through her body as the truck sped along... In the back of the truck, her mind corrected as her eyes focused momentarily. Other men squatted nearby, including one who was partially over her holding her arms as the other man was tapping the bubbles from a syringe with one gloved finger. The mans face angled down toward her own and he aimed something in a silver canister into her face from his other hand. The hand opened and the canister fell to the ground.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 108
