When Tennant finally spoke, she sounded much younger than her sixteen years. “Do you think Momma and Poppa are part of that group?”
Martha thought of the crevasse. All the bodies they’d pulled out of that hole were now baking in a tent back at Zigzag. She looked down at her hands, because she couldn’t say this part to the girl’s face—what needed to be said. “They very well might be. Others from your village, too. If you help me, I may still be able to help them.” This was probably a lie, but Martha had no choice. She needed this girl to cooperate.
“What happens if they reach Gresham?”
The Army will never let them reach Gresham.
Martha turned to her. “We don’t have much time.”
Tennant seemed to consider all of this. While her concern fell primarily with her sister and her family, Martha could tell she understood the bigger ramifications of what was happening. “Okay.”
Martha felt a flood of relief wash over her, because there was one other thing she hadn’t told Tennant. If Tennant and her sister didn’t help voluntarily, the president and those in charge would most likely instruct Fitch to continue anyway.
Martha got to her feet and reached a hand out to Tennant. “Let’s go see your sister.”
Sophie was two doors down.
Three soldiers were positioned outside her door, and they grew noticeably tense when Martha asked them to step aside so they could go in. She knew Fitch had been watching her speak to Tennant on the monitor, and she was certain he had also talked to these soldiers. Luckily, he was smart enough to stay out of sight. Martha had no idea how Tennant or Sophie would react if either girl saw him, and she really didn’t want to find out. There was no time for that.
Sophie was still standing in the middle of the room, still mumbling names. She looked up at them as they entered, her hands balled into tight fists. “Tennnnnant.”
Tennant went to her and threw her arms around her sister’s neck. Sophie let her, but didn’t reciprocate. She kept her arms at her sides, her eyes filled with suspicion and locked on Martha. Tennant leaned closer and whispered in her sister’s ear. Martha couldn’t make out the words, and she found herself looking up at the camera, wondering if the same person who had been reading Sophie’s lips was also deciphering what Tennant had just said.
When Tennant stepped away from Sophie, the younger girl blinked several times. She unclenched her fists, flexed her fingers.
In the hallway, Martha had swapped out the laptop for a tablet. The screen detailed vitals for both girls, fed by the implants in the back of their necks.
Tennant had told her the headache she’d felt immediately after exposure to the noise had faded away. According to her vitals, aside from a slightly elevated blood pressure, she was normal. Sophie’s temperature had stabilized around 102.
Martha reached for Sophie’s hand. She let her take it. Didn’t pull away.
“I’m going to help you,” Martha said.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Fraser
The feeling aboard Air Force One was thick, palpable. Although the plane was spacious, Fraser couldn’t help but feel claustrophobic, trapped inside the cylinder. He’d been here, stationary, for the better part of a day.
He kept looking at his watch and thinking about the two-hour time limit Holt had imposed on the scientific teams. During his initial briefing, he’d been instructed to limit excursions near 45-121 to two hours as well. Nobody had told him why. As a soldier, he hadn’t asked, only followed his orders. To no one in particular, he asked, “What time did Air Force One arrive here on base?”
The president looked up at him, exhausted. His eyes had sunk deep into their dark sockets, his hair ruffled and unkempt. General Westin didn’t look much better. Neither did Samantha Troy, the acting director of the NSA. She was on a phone in the corner of the room. The president’s deputy press secretary had excused herself to one of the bedrooms to fight off a migraine. Shortly after, the president had ordered nearly everyone else out of the room, too. Along with Lieutenant Colonel Fraser, only the three of them remained. The rest had moved to other portions of the plane and regrouped, most in the guest and press areas near the rear of the aircraft. The president offered his private office to Cardinal Kitzmiller. He was in there now with that scientist from NOAA, Dr. Harbin.
The president said, “We arrived at 1300. Why? Concerned about the window?”
“Should I be?”
General Westin exchanged a look with the president, then waved a dismissive hand. “You’re on board the most secure aircraft in existence, housed within one of our country’s best-defended bases. There is nothing to worry about.”
Fraser said nothing.
General Westin continued. “The fact that we’ve been here for more than four hours is testament to that.”
“I only bring it up because I was told to adhere to a two-hour window when first deployed. If you’re not concerned, then I won’t be, either.”
“I’ve been assured this aircraft is a hundred percent soundproof. Even if the anomaly were somehow able to strike here on base, it wouldn’t get past the exterior of the plane,” the president said. “Aside from that, we know where the horde is and where they’re going.”
Fraser nodded.
Several satellites had been repositioned and were transmitting images of the horde in near real time to one of the monitors on the wall. At their current speed, they would reach Gresham in a little less than four hours. The military had been deployed and had attempted to evacuate some of the smaller towns and cities along the way, but that had done little good. The moment the horde encountered them, the soldiers broke from ranks, joined the horde, and began to run. They were lost. Further deployments were kept at a ten-mile distance from the horde, but that proved ineffective as well—as civilians were evacuated and relocated, the horde shifted direction, adjusted just enough to target the new location. The horde somehow sensed large groups of people and was drawn to them like a moth to flame. Forcing people to relocate to evacuation centers only created more viable, condensed targets. Grew the horde faster. Airlifts were the only way to get people out of harm’s way, and there was no way to transport all those in their path. Even if they could, it wouldn’t keep the horde from reaching Gresham or another large city. At best, they’d only slow them down. In just the past two hours, the size of the horde had increased to at least a hundred and twenty thousand. The towns left in its wake had been decimated.
“Sir, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I don’t see any alternative but some type of clinical strike,” General Westin said.
“You mean kill them, General,” the president fired back. “Let’s not sugarcoat. Don’t call them actors, don’t call this a theater. I want you to be perfectly clear—you want to kill American citizens.”
“I see no other alternative.” He stood and went to the monitor. “Eagle Creek, Dover, Springwater—each of these towns will add another three to four thousand to their total number. There are dozens more little towns just like these between the horde’s current location and Gresham. We continue to feed it, the monster just grows stronger. Soon the size will become completely unmanageable, and a strike will be off the table, too. We need to act while we still have a window—thin their numbers, weaken this beast.”
“Hypothetically, you do that,” the president replied. “Let’s say you wipe out every last one of them. How does that prevent the anomaly, that sound, from striking again? We could have a new horde in a matter of hours. You commit mass genocide, and we’re right back here again looking at the same scenario. Looking at killing more Americans.”
“We buy time, Mr. President. We secure several more hours and possibly come up with another solution in those hours. Right now, this is all we’ve got, and we need to act.”
In the corner of the room, Samantha Troy hung up the phone and looked back at them grimly. “Attempts at discrediting the reports in the media and online aren’t working. We’re picking up chatte
r from intelligence agencies—they’re beginning to see this as a threat.”
Everyone in the room understood what this meant, but the general spelled it out anyway in an attempt to drive his point home. “If we wait much longer, someone other than you may decide a strike is necessary to protect their own population.”
“You think China or Russia would start a war over this?”
Samantha Troy said, “They’ve both repositioned satellites to get a better look. Israel, too. Several European countries as well. It’s too early to fully understand how they’ll react, but I think the general may be right—if these other countries are having similar discussions to ours—realizing the horde could reach unmanageable proportions after absorbing the population of a major city—and they feel we haven’t acted adequately to resolve the problem, they may decide we’re unable or unwilling to solve the situation. That’s when they’re most likely to act, do whatever they feel is in their own best interest.”
“Sir,” General Westin interrupted. “If one of them acts, I can guarantee they won’t do so with the precision we’re capable of. Loss of life would most likely be far larger. We’d see collateral damage well beyond those who are infected.”
The president rose and went to one of the windows, looked out into the hangar. “Dr. Fitch wants to catch one.”
“And, what, waste more time studying it?” General Westin scoffed. “He’s got both those girls in a cage and hasn’t learned anything.”
Without turning, the president replied, “He feels those girls weren’t infected at the same level as the others. He thinks that may lead us to a possible inoculation. He also thinks the entire group is acting with some sort of hive mind and the only way we can fully understand that mind is to capture a member of the horde. He wants to approach this from two directions—an inoculation from the girls, and stop the horde from within; take out the hive.”
“We have less than four hours,” the general reiterated. “There is no time.”
The president didn’t reply, only stared out the window.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Martha
Martha stood on the tarmac with Harbin and several others and watched Air Force One climb into the sky and disappear from view. Something about that moment made her feel desperately alone. The president, the people on that plane—they should have inspired confidence, strength. Instead, all she could think about were the worried looks on their faces as the door closed. It felt as if they were fleeing.
How do you outrun a sound?
Fraser came up behind them, and when Martha turned, she noticed he wasn’t watching the plane but was staring down at the ground, his face filled with concern.
“What is it?” she asked him, keeping her voice low.
“Where’s Fitch?”
“In the lab, studying some of the tissue samples from Mount Hood.”
Fraser looked defeated. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m going to just come right out with it. We lost contact with Zigzag several hours ago. I sent in a recon team…we’ve got six dead, everyone else is gone, missing. The walls we built around the camp have been breached in several places. They didn’t find any expended rounds, no evidence of a firefight. Whatever happened, happened fast.”
Harbin’s mouth fell open.
Martha felt her heart sink.
Joy Reiber.
Russel Fravel.
Brenna Hauff.
Brian Tomes.
Their only other survivor, Raina Caddy.
When she spoke, her voice cracked. “How is that possible? The horde is miles away, heading in the opposite direction—they’re nowhere near Zigzag anymore. Could it be something else?”
Fraser was slowly shaking his head. “Most likely they experienced a recurrence of the original anomaly, one of those ‘aftershocks’ Dr. Harbin mentioned. An echo.” He went quiet for a moment, forming his words carefully. “The breaks in the walls…they were breached from the inside out. They weren’t attacked or overrun like those videos we watched. We think the noise infected our people and they fled the camp on foot, same as that initial village. Their tracks tell us as much. We’re attempting to locate them with heat signatures, but the tree cover on the mountain is so thick we haven’t been able to pinpoint anyone. We suspect they’re heading west, following a similar path as the original group, but there’s no way to be sure.” He looked up at both their faces in turn. “We’re on our own here now.”
Harbin asked, “Are we safe here? On this base?”
Fraser didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Martha thought of Air Force One disappearing into the sky. When she looked back up, the plane was gone. The wind had picked up the contrails, smudging their tracks. In a moment, those would be gone, too.
Harbin said, “Cardinal Kitzmiller told me tensions with foreign governments have grown substantially in the past several hours and the president isn’t returning phone calls. He’s been off-grid now for the better part of a day. That’s making a lot of people nervous.”
Martha tried to rationalize. “It makes sense for him to remain mobile. I wouldn’t sit in the White House, either.”
“The cardinal also said procedures dictate the president should be in the air prior to launching an air strike or if the imminent threat of a strike from a foreign body exists.”
“Launch an air strike?” Martha frowned at Fraser. “He wouldn’t attack those people, would he?”
Fraser didn’t answer her. Instead, he looked at Harbin. “What else did the cardinal tell you? Your meeting lasted nearly as long as mine with the president.”
Harbin shuffled his feet. “He’s convinced this is the act of some higher power. Some kind of reckoning or global cleansing. He believes military options will prove ineffective and it will only be a matter of time before the president realizes regardless of what he does, the outcome of this situation is beyond his control.”
“And what do you think?”
Harbin shrugged. “I may be a man of science, but I try to keep an open mind. I’m willing to accept there is far more in this universe we don’t understand than that which we do.”
“Even demons?” Martha said.
With this, Harbin let out an uncomfortable chuckle. “The Old Testament is an odd thing. Much like the New Testament, I find it to be an interesting read, but whether it is fact or fiction is not for me to decide. There are some interesting distinctions, though. In the Old Testament, although the God we recognize today is depicted as the one who created the world, the ‘true God,’ the God of the Old Testament is not consistently presented as the only God who exists. That is something that changed or evolved between both Testaments. The Old Testament abounds with others, Anahshim…the god of Tahor being another.”
“Tahor?” Fraser repeated.
“Loosely translated, it means pure.”
“The God of Pure.”
Harbin nodded. “Or the God of Cleansing, as the cardinal alluded to. What I find fascinating is that all religions have a similar deity. All walks of life. The Hindus have Shiva, also known as the Destroyer. Cherokee Indians have Uyaga. Even Islamic texts, which in current form preach a single God, much like the New Testament, have ninety-nine different names for God, or Allah. Over the years, those names have evolved to become attributions rather than individuals, as if many deities became one. In those earlier writings, they have al-Mumit, the Bringer of Death. Whether you believe religion to be gospel or a complete fabrication, all seem to share similar origins. As if each of these ancient texts or ideologies came from a singular, much older, source. From a time before our current records.”
He paused for a second and studied the ground. “Even if you put religion aside and focus purely on science, modern humans have only existed on this planet for two hundred thousand years or so. The planet itself is 4.543 billion years old. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. It’s naive to think this planet is ours. We’re merely the latest short-term residents. To ignore the possibi
lity that something far older than us or our understanding has possibly returned to reclaim Earth would be equally naive. That is what the cardinal believes as well. That is what he is communicating to the president.” He sighed. “None of this provides answers, only more questions. And it’s answers the president needs right now, if we have any hope of avoiding a military solution.”
Behind them, about halfway down the tarmac, two large helicopters with twin blades came to life. Troop carriers. The blades quickly gained speed with a loud and steady whoop, whoop, whoop.
“The president authorized me to try and capture one of the horde,” Fraser said flatly. “Fitch convinced him we need a live sample. Someone fully infected, not half-baked like that little girl.”
“Sophie.”
“Sophie, right.” He repeated her name, but his mind was elsewhere. No doubt thinking about what he was about to attempt. “In four hours, that horde will reach Gresham and potentially double in size. This may be our last chance to try and control this.”
Martha stood in silence, not sure what else to say. She wasn’t sure they ever had this under control.
As Fraser turned and started toward the helicopter, Harbin shouted over the growing noise. “Are you sure about Zigzag? They’re all…gone?”
Fraser stopped midstep, turned half toward him, and nodded softly.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Fraser
With a top speed of 196 miles per hour, the two Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters made quick work of the distance between McChord Air Force Base and the horde, now just a little more than two hours outside the city of Gresham, Oregon.
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