by Mark Wandrey
Alinsky went to work with the Glock; the 10mm rounds hammered at the infected and dropped them much more effectively than the 5.56 rifle rounds had. Those were hard hitting, but against unarmored, and often naked, flesh, they just tended to punch neat holes. Especially with the ball or full metal-jacketed rounds they were issued. His 10mm was loaded with Barnes TAC-XPD, a computer-designed hollow point projectile which caused massive trauma on impact. They were strictly forbidden by the Geneva Convention, but he was fresh out of fucks to give.
As both the infected on the hood went down in fountains of blood from a single chest wound each, he made a mental note for if he ever got cured to send an email to Ed Dillon, who knew the company owner. The TAC-XPD wasn’t available to the public in 10mm; he’d gotten several boxes as a personal favor.
He ran down a magazine, dropped it through the turret to land on the cab of the truck, and slid another one in. He stared at the gun for a long second, trying to remember how to finish loading it. An infected grabbed him from behind, a hand wrapping around his helmet and bending his head back to expose his neck. Nails tore at his face. Alinsky’s thumb remembered its job, and the slide smacked a fresh round into the chamber. He bent his arm over his right shoulder and felt the gun hit something. He fired twice.
The muzzle blast hit him in the ear like a baseball bat, causing him to black out. When the lights came back on, he was sitting on the floor of the truck cab, blood running down the side of his face. The corporal driving the truck had the wheel in both hands, tendons standing out, sweat pouring off his face in rivers. How’d I get down into the cab? Alinsky wondered. Amazingly, the gun was still in his hand. Something dripped on his head. He looked up and saw an infected reaching down for him. The Glock went up, almost like a robotically-controlled weapon, and shot the infected. It had once been an attractive redhead; her face was smeared with blood almost the same color as her hair. The 10mm hollow point destroyed her beauty forever.
How far had they gone? He looked out the window and saw that the front of the truck was completely covered in infected. They fought with each other to get at the men inside the cab, smashing fists and even faces against the windshield. It was heavily-armored glass, and yet it was still cracking. He stared at one of them in amazement. He was missing both arms, the meat raw, bone visible. He wasn’t bleeding. How was that possible? Alinsky raised the gun and almost fired before he remembered he was inside the truck.
With a shuddering groan, the truck crashed into a huge group of infected and lurched to a stop. The sliding, squishing, crunching sensation caused by 10 tons of steel coming to a stop on hundreds of human bodies was a sound he’d remember for the rest of his too-short life. He blacked out for a moment again. Pure white-hot pain made him come back as an infected tore his left ear off with its teeth. It was the corporal. Alinsky shot him and kept pulling the trigger until the striker clicked on empty. He dropped the gun and reached for the other thing. What was it called?
A body landed on him, crushing him forward against the dashboard. The controls were steel, and his nose was crushed. His vision swam as a dial ruptured his left eyeball. It didn’t hurt. Something was singing in his mind. A sound, a meaning, a purpose. He resumed reaching with his right hand. You are a US Marine, his slowly ebbing consciousness screamed from the small part of his higher functions it still controlled, Marines do not give up!
His hand groped. He felt teeth sink into the meat of his left bicep, and blood sprayed. Another body landed on him, pushing him sideways, head toward the foot well. Something square hit him in the ribs. A box. What box? What does that mean? More teeth tore at his back, shoulders, and neck. None of it registered as pain. Box. With jerky movements, he bent his arm under his body and felt the box. It was familiar. A key. A button. He pushed the button. No, that’s not right.
Flesh tore away from his neck. A flood of wet washed across his face, running into his working eye and his nose.
Press. Nothing. That’s not right.
The new part of his brain began to take control.
You are a Marine! What do I do? Do your job, finish the mission. His fingers moved fractionally and found the key. It turned. He moved back to the button. Semper fidelis. He pressed the button.
* * *
“Fuck!” Andrew barked as the five big trucks turned into five incandescent explosions. He banked and slammed the throttle against the stop as the shock wave, all too visible, raced out. It slapped the underside of the F-35 and flung it like a child’s toy. Alarms blared across the status board and in his helmet earphones. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He fought the controls, desperately trying to regain control of the spinning plane. The airspeed, climb/sink rate, and RPM readings were all shit. The most advanced jet fighter on the planet, and he was reduced to flying it entirely by feel. It might have been an easier job if he’d had more than one whole hour in the cockpit!
The fact that it was the most advanced fighter in the world saved him. The computers analyzed the spin, modified his control inputs, and brought the plane under control. With enough power and remaining airspeed, he pulled out of the spinning dive and climbed back up. Behind him the five blasts had merged into a rather respectable mushroom cloud of debris, created by the detonation of 35 tons of high explosive originally intended to cut the island off from the mainland.
“Fucking crazy, brave sons of bitches,” Andrew said as he reduced power and executed a turn back toward the base. He had just 15 minutes of flight time remaining.
He realized he was partly in shock, and partly in a sustained state of rage. How many more were going to die before this day was over? All of them? “Goddamnit, why?” he yelled into his oxygen mask. He pounded the padded side of the cockpit with his gloved fist and screamed, his voice rebounding off the plexiglass canopy. So few of them left, and this is what they were doing; sacrificing thousands to save one?
Andrew’s flight path took him back over the channel and the Coronado Bridge. It was chewed up, the concrete poked with occasional holes caused by machine gun fire from the pair of Seahawk helicopters. Both birds were continuously strafing 7.62mm gunfire at the never-ending stream of bodies moving toward the island. There must have been hundreds of bodies, most piled near the center of the bridge span. They were like drifts of snow, ebbing and moving as ever more were added and pushed them around.
“All they need is a chance,” Andrew said to himself in the cockpit. Taped to the radio control were several frequencies that Young had believed he might find useful. He selected one and spoke. “Navy helos, this is Camelot X-Ray Two.”
“Go ahead, Camelot,” the female voice replied.
“I’d get clear of the bridge immediately,” he said.
“Camelot, advise why?”
“Because I’m going to blow it the fuck up, that’s why.” Andrew was just south of the island. He banked around and climbed hard, the turbines whining as he pushed into a nearly vertical climb before leveling off at 15,000 feet. His fingers worked on the stores control.
“Camelot X-Ray Two, this is the Ford air boss. Stand down.”
“Beeker,” Andrew replied, “how’s it hanging, Commander?”
“What the fuck are you doing, Lieutenant?”
“Giving those Marines a chance,” he said.
“You know the Commander in Chief has ordered us not to destroy civilian infrastructure.”
“I’m questioning the command authority’s judgement in this situation,” Andrew growled.
“Tobin,” another voice cut in, “this is Captain Gilchrist.”
“I recognize your voice, sir.”
“Then you are ordered to stand down and return to the carrier.”
“I hear you, sir.” He armed his weapons. “I’m going weapons hot, you better tell those helos to move.”
“Tobin, God damn y—” Andrew switched off the radio and lased the bridge. On the radar the two helicopters spun and raced away.
“Fuck orders,” he said and mashed t
he pickle. The two final Mark 84 bombs fell away. Five seconds later they slammed into the southern span of the bridge. The flashes of the explosion washed out his FLIR for a second. When it cleared, 200 feet of the bridge was tumbling in ruins.
He descended and banked over the island. Less than 10 minutes of fuel remained. He either needed to head for the carrier, land on the air field below, or prepare for a swim. Somehow, he didn’t think his reception on the carrier would be a good one. His career was over, of that there was no doubt. They were under martial law, which could well mean he’d be facing summary execution for disobeying a direct order. Even that failed to generate any real concern. After the last few weeks, he was just about done.
The fighting continued below; the Marines had pulled all the way back to the air field. Several Ospreys had landed and were waiting to evacuate. There were dozens of the Navy inflatable boats as well, enough to evacuate all the Marines. But they weren’t leaving. His radar showed a single aircraft approaching. A big plane, lining up on Runway 11 from the west. The reason all those brave men were wasting their lives.
Andrew orbited the island to the south side, falling in behind the descending E-4. He watched as it lowered its landing gear and the flaps descended. The island was just a mile ahead. The lone surviving LCAC was churning through the surf below, heading west toward the Essex. He was alone in the sky with the modified 747. He glanced down. Five minutes of flight time remained. The E-4 was in his gun sight, dead ahead. His thumb found the afterburner control and he calmly squeezed it as he ran the throttle to the stop. Raw fuel was fed into the rear of the engine, and the fighter leapt ahead.
Alone, he thought as the G forces pushed him back into the pilot’s seat. The E-4, now just a few hundred feet up above the water, was passing over the edge of the island as he rocketed at it. The pilot must have glanced at the radar because he began to turn. Andrew gently moved the stick and tracked the E-4’s turn. Everyone dies alone. Unbidden, the face of his mother came into his mind’s eye. She was standing on the porch waving goodbye as he left from his last visit. The F-35 slammed into the E-4.
* * *
Captain Sharps was tired from the long day of fighting, but he was also having difficulty concentrating. The men had abandoned their defensive positions and fallen back next to the runway, creating a human cordon. Fire was constant, but manageable. They’d all grabbed as many magazines as they could, abandoned the heavy weapons, and fallen back to the field. There was no more room to retreat. If they lost the runway, the President’s plane would land in an army of the infected.
The infected continued to attack in crazy wave after wave. He knew that would stop now, after hearing the bridge had been destroyed. His late colonel had bought him a brief reprieve with his life. At least they were holding out now, though he’d still lost at least a squad’s worth of men since then. They were down more than a company now.
The arm with the bullet wound was a dull agony which he did his best to ignore. A roar of jet engines made him look up. The President’s plane was on final approach, wheels down and flaps out, low and slow. Its engines were winding up, the big plane banking to the side. But it wasn’t that engine noise that made him look. The F-35 that had helped Alinsky’s company make it back was behind the E-4, its engines screaming as it accelerated.
“What the hell?” he wondered, a second before the two planes collided. Hundreds of Marines looked up, eyes wide in shock. The F-35 smashed into the modified 747 midway down the right wing, between the engines, severing the wing completely. The fighter was torn in half, and its engines exploded, igniting the fuel spewing from the E-4’s torn wing tank.
The E-4 rolled and nosed downward, trailing fire all the way. It was only going 180 knots and just 100 feet above the island, but the impact was a thunderous crash that blossomed into a spectacular ball of burning fire and debris. The E-4 and all aboard it were destroyed.
“What do we do now?” Gunny McComb asked. Captain Sharp made a strange sound, causing the gunny to turn and look at him, just as the captain snarled and pounced at the gunny’s throat.
* * * * *
Chapter Sixteen
Evening, Sunday, May 1
HAARP Research Facility, 150 Miles West of San Diego
Dr. Lisha Breda watched the lines of data streaming down the computer screen in columns. It never stopped, and never seemed to repeat. It’s rather hypnotizing, she thought. It probably didn’t help that she was running on coffee and pep pills. The routine was familiar from her days in graduate school so many years ago. Funny how fast you return to old habits.
“Anything yet?” Oz asked, sticking his head into her office. She looked from the screen to him and shook her head. “Sorry,” he apologized, “I just don’t think we have the processing power.” She sighed and nodded her head.
“We have a damn super computer.”
“It was never configured to process stuff like this,” he reminded her. “It was configured to sequence genomes.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I thought you’d want to hear the news.”
“What news?” she asked.
“The president is dead.”
“What?” she asked, confused. “I thought they’d gone to get her in San Diego, or something. The Army?”
“Marines,” he corrected. “Yeah, they mounted this huge operation. Several planeloads of survivors from Hawaii landed and were rescued. But when the president’s plane started to land, a Navy fighter collided with it, and they both crashed.”
“Wow,” Lisha said, “that sucks.” He nodded this time. “So, who’s in charge now, that admiral?”
“They think he’s dead too. The carrier he was on was overrun by zombies. The Marines are going to mount an effort to retake it later. Right now, they’re all back aboard their ship and are recovering.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“There’s a TV show being broadcast from the USS Ford. The person running it is Kathy Clifford.”
“The one from cable news?”
“Yep, same one. Anyway, she’s providing news and such. Calls it FTC, the Flotilla Television Channel.”
“That’s creative.”
“Not as creative as space ships.”
“What are you going on about?”
“You really should watch the show,” he said and took out his phone. “They have a sort of wireless network up too. Some guy named Wade Watts set it up.” He tapped on his phone, and a video came up. It was that big Air Force plane parked on one of the carriers. She remembered hearing something about it being landed there. That hadn’t sounded possible. However, the plane was hovering over the carrier’s deck. Hovering. The camera zoomed in showing the carrier wasn’t moving, just floating next to another Navy ship while cargo was transferred. The plane floated, steady, just above the deck.
The camera zoomed closer and showed a rope ladder down from a door on the plane to the aircraft carrier’s deck. Someone was moving up the ladder. She watched in stunned amazement. The plane was rock steady, not moving in the slightest. She could tell because the carrier was moving slightly up and down from the tidal swells.
“Holy cow,” she said finally. “How is that possible?”
“Clifford said it’s through an alien device. But then she stopped talking about it. I think whoever’s in charge of the military didn’t want her talking about it anymore.”
“Alien device,” Lisha said, and turned back slowly to look at the computer screen. Data was still streaming, carefully being recorded by data-loggers based on an algorithm, written by Oz, and analyzing the flood of data. When they’d started digging down into the EEG pulses generated by Grant Porter’s brain, they’d found Oz was right. The data had structure. The problem was they hadn’t been recording it deep enough. Or rather, with enough speed.
She moved to the adjacent room, her old lab. As soon as the door opened she missed the rhythmic thumping. Her former assistant was still there, though. Well, most of him. He was on a support bed, IVs in his ar
m, catheterized, a colostomy system in place, his body permanently shut down. The surgery had been simple enough. A quick entrance into the brain, a snip to the motor cortex, and he could no longer move. All autonomic functions still did their thing, running heart, lungs, etc. Just no more thumping or danger of spreading the contagion.
“He’s actually freakier now,” Oz said. Grant’s eyes tracked them like automated lasers, jerking back and forth between the two. “You can see he’s thinking and everything; he just can’t do anything about it. He’d love to eat my face off.”
“He can’t really think,” Lisha said, “his brain function is not of a higher order.”
“Right,” Oz said.
Lisha walked over to look at the computer links. While she’d been in his brain, making him harmless, so to speak, she’d inserted probes into what was left of his brain. Normally there were 12 leads to an EEG; she’d put 29 into what was left of his brain. The rest of it was in the refrigerator in nutrient fluid.
With the living brain heavily wired, Lisha’s neural team had been able to get some really good signals. She’d flat-lined him and restarted his heart after five minutes. Just like before, that reboot sequence came through. This time she was recording in super-high-definition, ultra-high speed, and from more than double the normal inputs inserted directly into the brain.
“What does it all mean?” Oz asked. “I mean, what do you think it means?” On the series of flat panel monitors were wire frame constructs of Strain Delta. These were no longer the x-ray crystallography images. These were fractal images based on data they’d assembled from further electron studies, as well as the EEG data. This view looked even less like a snowflake. It looked like a machine.
“It means this isn’t a living thing,” she said. Now if they could just make sense out of all the data strings. All 26 million of them. Grant Porter continued to watch them, and the computers continued to work.
