by David Peters
“Get the hell out of here!” the Marine yelled without turning around.
“Tell me the damn situation, soldier!”
The young man finally turned and faced the captain, “Crap, sorry, sir. No movement in the last few minutes. We could hear shooting and see the flashes but we haven’t seen anything.”
“Who are they shooting?”
“People ain’t right in there.”
The second soldier added shakily, “They’re all black and stuff. They got somethin’. Some sickness or somethin’. They ain’t right.”
“They’re fast too, sir.”
Charles nodded, “I want my ship back. You two, clear to the next bulkhead. I want to see what is going on in medical.”
“Yes, sir.”
While one soldier brought his rifle up for cover, the second one raced forward to the next doorway. When he reached it, he dropped to one knee and waved the other three forward.
Several meters into the next passageway, a black lump of something lay motionless on the floor.
“That what you have been seeing?” Lewis asked.
“More or less. Sometimes they don’t even look human, sir. That one still has clothes, the last one we saw dart by didn’t.”
“Medical is up on the left. Keep moving. I want that room and this passageway secured.”
The Marines stood just out of sight at the door then nodded as they burst in with their weapons looking for a target. Nothing moved in the destroyed room.
Bodies littered the room. Several people in hospital scrubs were torn up and dead in a pile. Body bags were stacked at the back of the room. Blood covered nearly every surface.
Charles picked up one of the phones on the wall, “I want anyone available with a sidearm down to primary medical.”
“Squad is on the way, sir.”
“We hold here until we get more guns then sweep the rest of this section. You, make sure these people are actually dead.”
The soldier checked the people torn up on the floor, “Those two are history but this one is hot as hell.”
“You got your cuffs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cuff him to that support. Make sure it’s tight.”
“Sir?”
“Trust me on this. I’m paranoid as hell, you don’t get to where I am without being just a little strange.”
“You’re the boss, sir.”
The soldier dragged the heavy body to the side of the room and handcuffed the medic to a metal pipe running from the floor to the ceiling.
“What the hell!” the soldier nearly screamed, “Someone is alive in there!”
At the back of the room one of the body bags was moving.
“Stay back!” the captain nearly screamed.
It was slow at first then began to get more agitated as the occupant could find no opening. They could see something sharp was being pushed against the inside of the heavy, black plastic. Several raised points moved up and down the bag until finally, a black hand with short talons tore through and grasped at the open air. A second hand joined and widened the hole until a black face was able to see the people in the room. The deep-red eyes moved from person to person until they settled on the captain.
He could only stare back. The only emotion he could see written on the matte-black face and lifeless eyes was a vast and overwhelming hatred. This thing wanted to consume him in every conceivable way.
It had a mouth full of sharp teeth, no longer human. It let out a long hiss as it began to struggle under the weight of the other bags pressing down on it.
“What the hell is that thing?” one of the soldiers asked.
The red eyes darted to the sound of his voice and hissed quietly. The thing began to struggle as it pulled itself out of the body bag. Charles held his pistol at the ready and eased the safety off. The click was deafening in the quiet room. The black thing centered its eyes on Charles and let out a long, painful scream.
Charles pulled the trigger and shot the beast square in the middle of its chest. It stopped screaming but didn’t go down. As it stood to take a step toward him, he fired two more times. Still the beast staggered forward. Finally, one of the Marines shot it through the head and it fell the ground motionless.
Over the ringing in his ears he could hear the sound of boots running down the passageway.
“I want every one of these bags weighted and thrown overboard. If it’s dead, toss it. If it’s hot, throw it in the brig. I want armed guards watching them twenty-four-seven. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No bare hands on anyone hot or dead. I want full MOP gear for the dead and chemical gloves in the brig.”
“Yes, sir.”
Four soldiers stood in the doorway with full riot gear.
“You four. I want this ship cleared. If they are hot, brig, if they are dead, overboard. No questions. I want this ship cleaned.”
“Aye, sir.”
The leader of the four turned to the other three, “You two head back to central and get anyone with a gun. Start at the bow and move back. You, follow me. We are going to start in engineering and work forward.”
The four separated and ran down the hallway in opposite directions.
Charles spoke into the phone, “I want this ship locked down. We are in a quarantined state now. No one else gets on this ship until I know we are secure. All sightings of anything black go straight to security. Any rescues coming from other ships can stay on the damn deck for now. Put a guard on them and make sure none of them are sick.”
“I’m heading back to the CIC. You keep an eye on these bags until someone gets here to toss ‘em. If a bag moves, shoot it, a lot.”
~3~
It took three days of round-the-clock security checks but they were finally able to pronounced the ship clean. Every hold, birth and closet had been checked and rechecked. More than two hundred bodies had been thrown overboard and the brig still had forty-three people locked away until they could be pronounced safe. Every person who had been found with a fever had a severe bite wound somewhere on their body, usually the neck or shoulder.
Charles sat at his desk and tried to rub the sleepiness from his eyes, “This is the data from today?”
“Yes, sir”
“This is it? What is this, three photos?”
“Pilots have been ordered to conserve everything so they are only flying over things that look different or are finally smoke free.”
“Safe to assume that over the last four weeks we haven’t gotten anyone on the horn that can put some gas in our tanks?”
“No, sir.”
He flipped through the three photographs. One showed the smoke clearing over the southern end of Seattle. He couldn’t see any signs of human life just rampant destruction on every block. The second picture was the waterfront of Tacoma twenty miles to the south. Several large container ships were burned and resting on the muddy bottom. The last picture was a long stretch of freeway over the mountain pass. Miles of cars clogged the freeway. The resolution was too poor to make out individuals but he knew there was fighting down there.
“Christ on a crutch. Is there any city left alive?”
Four weeks of photographs told the story of the continuing decline along the coast of western Washington. The high-resolution photographs of Seattle showed a city burned out of life. Most of the waterfront had fallen into the Puget Sound, the wood pilings and frames burned away. The miles of the commercial shipping piers were nothing but black smudges of burned out ships and containers. At some point a fire had started in the hills to the north of town and swept, unchecked through the neighborhoods, many of which were still burning.
Tacoma, Bremerton, all the way north to Bellingham and Victoria showed the same damage. The joint Air Force-Army base was gone as well as all three Naval bases in the area. The radio was quiet although the radar aircraft, an old E-2 Hawkeye, was receiving intermittent radio signals from a variety of different sources.
“We get a final report from John Paul Jones?”
“Yes, sir. They will be unable to make repairs and are requesting permission to abandon ship and scuttle.”
The John Paul Jones was the last remaining missile frigate. Fire had gutted most of the engine and engineering spaces but they had gotten it under control. They had sanitized the ship but were running a skeleton crew with far too many civilians aboard. They had been waiting for twenty hours to hear if they could get the ship underway.
“Let’s get them moved. Try to get the civies spread out among the ships still able to move. Make sure to keep quarantine status. Check them all and don’t let anyone slip through the cracks.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many are heading south?”
“The Camden, Mustin and O’Kane have all departed for San Diego as per your orders. They should arrive in six days’ time.”
“That leaves us with four battle ready ships and a sub that can do little but putter around in the water?”
“Yes, sir. CAG will have aircraft numbers for you inside of the hour.”
“Let’s keep an eye...”
The radio operator interrupted, “Sir, priority traffic from Eagle One requesting Stennis Actual.”
“Go ahead.”
“Eagle One, go for Stennis Actual.”
“Stennis Actual, single contact inbound from one-four-seven degrees. One thousand two-hundred feet moving at two-hundred and eighty four knots. Transponder is set to emergency. No radio traffic.”
“Eagle One, distance to target?”
“Stennis, target is eighty-seven miles out.”
“Moving too fast to be a helo, to slow too be a jet. Civie looking for a place to land?”
“How the hell would they know we are out here? Eagle One would have seen the radar if they had used it. I’m not aware of any way they could know the location well enough to bee-line to us like that.”
“Send the ready wing out to take a look, sir?”
“Yeah. Let’s get eyes-on before they get too close. Has to be military.”
It took less than three minutes for the Hornet sitting on the catapult to launch into the air and intercept the incoming aircraft.
“Stennis, I have eyes on target. It’s a Marine Osprey. It looks beat to shit. One side of this thing looks burned to a crisp. I can see the pilot, no co-pilot.”
The air traffic controller called over her shoulder, “I have an inbound request for landing, sir.”
“Who are they?”
“Claim to be Military Intelligence. They are talking about something called Operation Pendulum.”
“What the hell is Operation Pendulum?”
“I don’t show any record of that project in any of our databases, sir. Either it’s classified or it’s newer than our last update.”
“Let them land but I want full guard on them when they do. I don’t want any more of the damn blood-rot getting on my deck. I don’t care if an admiral walks out of that thing, he doesn’t go anywhere without someone I trust having a gun in hand.”
The large, twin rotor heli-plane circled the carrier once before slowing and tilting the rotors to vertical. It wobbled somewhat, as if the pilot were having difficulty flying the damaged bird. It finally touched down roughly on the rear deck and the propellers slowly spun to a stop.
The aircraft was heavily damaged by fire. The rear third of the plane was blackened and the tires on the right side of the tricycle gear were melted away. The ramp started to lower on the hydraulic pistons then fell open with a loud bang and a cloud of smoke and dust.
Over the ever present noise of the carrier deck, Charles could hear the safeties being removed from the multitude of weapons pointed at the aircraft.
Several wisps of smoke escaped the cabin as two armed men stepped out of the bay. Their uniforms were burned and torn as they looked around the deck with the eyes of trained soldiers. The kept their weapons aimed in the general direction of the carrier security forces. A third soldier walked down to the end of the ramp, his own weapon slung over his shoulder. He watched the crowd gathered on the deck as he lit a cigarette.
The soldier took a long draw on the cigarette as his eyes moved over the crowd and across the massive, steel island on the deck. He took another long draw before dropping the cigarette on the deck and crushing it with his foot
“We’re good, gentlemen. Let them play their game.”
The two behind him slowly placed their weapons on the deck. With their arms held high, they turned to face the aircraft.
The soldier that appeared to be in charge called out absently over his shoulder, “You can come out now, Doc. We’re here and these guys look healthy. Well, maybe not healthy but they sure as hell ain’t baddies.”
A meek looking man wearing a filthy lab coat and carrying a large, metal briefcase stepped out of the shadows and onto the ramp. He held his hand up to shield his eyes as he looked past the ring of weapons pointing at his aircraft toward the crowd gathering behind them. His eyes moved back and forth several times until he found the face he was looking for. He locked eyes with Charles and nodded.
He stood up straight and walked purposefully toward the captain, the crowd parting as he moved toward him.
“Are you Captain Lewis?”
“I am. Who might you be and why are you on my ship?”
“My name is Doctor Fredrick R. Mathews. Formally with the CDC but drafted into a charter group of scientists and engineers dedicated to investigating a newly discovered anomaly. My job there was created about six months ago.”
“And this is related to the current crisis how?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk, in private?”
“We can use the ward room if you can give me an idea of why I even need to listen to you.”
“The last order from the president was for me to get this information into the hands of someone that can use it. Right now, you are the nearest thing we have to a safe retreat. I would like to hand this over properly and go about my business.”
“The president is dead?”
“As far as we know. Communication got spotty at the end as I am sure you are well aware. We have not heard anything from our command chain in nine days. Orders were to initiate Operation Pendulum if we went more than seven days without communications, hence our current actions.”
“I’m not familiar with Operation Pendulum.”
“Nor should you be. It wasn’t so much classified as it was made up at the spur of the moment. As far as I know, only those of us working on it and the president were aware of it.”
“Works for me.”
~4~
“So who are you? In detail.”
“My name is Fredrick Mathews as I said earlier. I am, or was, a professor of music at the University of Texas.”
“Um, what? How in the hell does someone that teaches music wind up with three angry Marines on a nearly blown up Osprey on my deck working for some top secret military group?”
“Long story short? I knew the properties of sound that they were looking for. They needed someone that understood it at a scientific level and I was all they could get on short notice,” he said as he worked the dials on the security locks. “They were pretty lucky to get me. I was the only one that had access to the machinery they needed. Once we made an ingress to what we were looking for, the military was contacted and everything picked up pace. It’s quite amazing how fast money makes an appearance once someone in a uniform arrives.”
The case opened with a slight hiss and folded open to reveal a sophisticated laptop and communication array. He typed in several commands and a list of files opened on the screen. He continued listing various folder contents until he found the image he was looking for.
“This was discovered two kilometers under the desert in New Mexico. They were tunneling out long-term storage for bioweapons that weren’t even supposed to exist. You know, treaties and all. The weapons needed to be kept somewhere that prying satellite eyes wo
uldn’t be able to find so this project was born. The crews had been digging for six months when they broke into a cavern containing this thing.”
He turned the laptop around to show a large disk. It appeared to be nearly one-hundred feet across with a perfectly formed dome ceiling overhead. There was glowing blue writing in several places but he couldn’t guess at the origin. It was unlike any language he had ever seen.
“What is that thing?”
“Short version? A communication device. It creates ultra-low sounds, somewhere right around point zero one hertz. It uses the planet as a transceiver.”
“And we can’t hear that?”
“Not even close. Human ears begin to cut off around twenty hertz on the low side of things.”
“So who put it there?”
“It put itself there.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“That drum is made of living tissue. We were able to get these videos and several samples out before fighting broke out topside but that thing, that device, is alive.”
“The time stamp on that video is five months old. I’m pretty sure shit started hitting the proverbial fan more recently that that.”
“Yes, things got bad elsewhere exactly five weeks ago. Two weeks before that, everyone who went into this cavern didn’t come back out. Five weeks and one day ago we sent in a squad of heavily armed soldiers to try and find the missing workers. They didn’t come out and this thing started to send out pulses. A lot of them.”
“Why?”
“To tell the others to wake up. It was an alarm clock if you will. Or in the case of these things and how they appear to operate, a dinner bell.”
“How far could this signal travel?”
“The signal from this one could go several hundred miles, maybe more if the ground were solid enough or the waters still enough. The others that received it would repeat the signal exactly as it had come in.”
“There are more of these things?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Thousands. Enough that the message had circled the entire planet in less than thirty-nine hours. Every single one of these things drumming away like a rock band.”
