by Mike Kraus
Rick shook his head. “No. No way. A propagating shutdown command is the only way this would work. Otherwise, like you said, even if you could destroy or maybe even clean this stuff off of systems all it would take is one infected system touching them and everything would go down again.”
“Of course. But without the key—”
“Michael.” Rick put his mug down on the table and locked eyes with Dr. Evans. “I flew from Virginia to California on a business trip right before this all started. I was barely on the ground before planes and cars started exploding around me. I’ve faced down the military, bloodthirsty gangs and mother nature herself. I’ve watched people die in front of me, some of them by my own hand. I’ve made it this far to get back home to my family and I’m not about to stop.” Rick’s voice shook slightly as it increased in volume and intensity. “If I can do all of that then I’m pretty sure you and I can figure out a way to stop this damned thing before it gets any worse. If this is the only surefire way to stop this weapon then I promise you we’re going to figure out how to make it happen.”
Dr. Evans closed his eyes and shook his head. “That’s a good speech, Rick. But it doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have what we need to even talk to Damocles much less authenticate a conversation.”
Rick began pacing across the room, talking as he walked. “I have to imagine the key would be stored on a secured system. Maybe even an air-gapped one, right?”
Dr. Evans shrugged. “I suppose so. That would make sense, given who developed it.”
“You said the communications protocol is bulletproof, right?”
“Absolutely.” Dr. Evans nodded.
“How can you be sure?”
Dr. Evans hesitated for a second, glancing between Rick and Jane. “Because they used software I wrote for it. I know it inside and out. It’s completely foolproof. No holes, no gaps, no tricks. Nothing you can exploit.”
“Damn.” Rick scratched his chin and tilted his head back and forth, letting out a contented sigh as he heard and felt his neck and back crack. “Okay, so if we want to stop this then we have to get the private key somehow.”
“But no one knows where it is!”
“Irrelevant.” Rick shook his head. “We can’t wipe it out and we can’t bypass its security. The only option available is to obtain the private key so we can encrypt a shutdown message.” Dr. Evans tried to argue again and Rick shut him down. “I understand the challenges involved here, Dr. Evans, but we have to come to grips with reality. If there are no other possible paths forward then we must take the only one available to us. Now come on, work with me here. Let’s say we figure out the key. What then?”
Dr. Evans sat back in his chair, working through the scenario in his mind. “We… we would need to know the precise communication protocols. Exactly how to tell it to shut down and propagate that command to all other instances of the virus that are seen. We couldn’t tell it to erase itself because that wouldn’t further the spread of the shutdown command.”
“Okay, so that kind of information is probably going to be found somewhere close to the key. We’ll deal with that later, too. Let’s say we have the key and we have the commands. What comes after that?”
“We’d need a system that Damocles hasn’t totally trashed. We’ll give the command to that system and the system will talk to other systems that are affected and it’ll spread outward from there.”
“And it won’t reinfect those systems?”
“No.” Dr. Evans shook his head firmly. “Damocles will still be on the clean systems, but it’ll be in a shutdown state. If any live versions of the virus try to reach out and infect a clean system they’ll receive the shutdown command from the clean system instead.”
“Okay, great. Again, it shouldn’t be hard to find something like that close to where we find the key and command instructions. Now we know what we need to do.”
Jane smiled and nodded, having been listening intently the whole time. “That’s great, Rick. But how do we do it?”
Rick looked at her. “We?”
Jane nodded. “What, do you think I’m going to sit around here?”
“I, uh… well no.” Rick stammered. “I guess I didn’t peg you as the adventuring type.
“Oh come on, now.” Jane gave Rick a wry smile. “After Las Vegas you’d have to strap me down to keep me from tagging along with you again.”
“You had… fun?” Rick raised an eyebrow.
“The nearly dying from heatstroke part wasn’t that much fun, no. And I guess the other parts weren’t ‘fun’ in the conventional sense.” Jane uncurled her legs and shifted forward in her seat. “But that had to have been the most exhilarating time of my life.” She looked at Dr. Evans and back at Rick. “So if you two are planning something to save the world you can count me in.”
Dr. Evans laughed and clapped his hands on his knees. “Now that’s the spirit!” He looked over at Rick. “I’ll add my two cents to this as well, if you don’t mind. Jane’s been absolutely incredible since I got here. Helping me obtain a computer to perform some research, distracting some of the soldiers when I needed to get some data from their archives and that sort of thing.”
“Huh.” Rick nodded approvingly. “Color me surprised and impressed.”
“So what’s the plan, gentlemen?” Jane took another sip from her mug and watched Rick and Dr. Evans intently.
“Good question.” Rick glanced upward and sighed. “The first thing we should do is see if General Black will listen to both Dr. Evans and me try to explain what we have to do to stop Damocles. If he’ll listen then he might be able to help us figure out where to go to get the data we need.”
“Another question.” Jane put a finger up in the air. “What’s the plan for when he says no, laughs in your faces and tosses you back into your rooms?”
Rick looked at Jane and Dr. Evans with a determined expression set in stone on his face. “Then we find our own path.”
Chapter 11
Somewhere between Ellisville, VA and Blacksburg, VA
When Jason finally pulled the truck to a stop, Dianne slowly released her death grips on the overhead handle and her left armrest. It had taken nearly three-quarters of an hour for Jason to get them to within half a mile of the gas station and Dianne had been holding on for dear life most of the way. The journey off-road had resulted in three near misses at rolling the truck over on its side, two instances where they had nearly gotten stuck in the soft dirt and at least seventeen new dents and scratches in the vehicle’s paint.
“Jason?” Dianne whispered his name as she stared out the front windshield.
“Yeah?”
“Can we find a different way back next time?”
“I’d like that.”
“Yeah.” Dianne nodded. “Me too.”
After taking a few minutes to collect themselves the pair got out and retrieved their gear from the truck bed and the back seats. Once everything was set Dianne turned up the volume on the radio and pressed down on the microphone button.
“Dianne to Sarah. Dianne to Mark. Anybody home?” A few seconds of silence passed before the radio screeched and a static-laden voice replied. “Hey mom, we’re here. Any updates?”
“None yet. We think we may have figured out where they are but we won’t know for certain until we get there. We’ve got half a mile of walking to do and we’ll know then. We’re going to go quiet on the radio for now and we’ll call you in a couple hours or so.”
“Sounds good. Stay safe out there.”
“You too.”
Dianne switched off the radio and slipped it into her backpack before hoisting the bag onto her shoulders. “You ready for this, Jason?”
“Ready as I can ever be, D.”
“Let’s get going.”
Leaving the truck parked far off the side of the road hidden in a dense cluster of trees and bushes, Dianne and Jason headed out. They followed the path of the highway, staying well clear of the road as they cros
sed the rolling hills, open fields and occasional lightly forested areas of southern Virginia. Their pace was slow—mostly due to Jason—but after an hour or so they finally found themselves approaching the location of the gas station.
From their vantage several hundred feet across the street on a hill it was easy to see that what used to be a large, clean and well-lit building had been radically altered and turned into something completely different.
Sandbags were piled high along the perimeter of the property around the gas station, surrounding both the main building and a few sheds that were located to the sides and back. Barbed wire had been crudely attached to the sandbags which stood about four feet tall and were at least four or five bags in thickness. Burned-out cars had apparently been pulled into position around certain parts of the sandbag interior, helping to shore up sections where the ground sloped sharply in one direction or another. The roof of the building and the covering over the pumps had been transformed as well, with a single row of sandbags three layers high stretching around the edge. A ramp constructed of scrap lumber stretched from the ground up to the roof, looking like it could collapse at any moment.
The windows of the main building were covered with plywood and boards, but only halfway up. The top half of the windows had been left exposed likely to aid those inside by providing natural lighting and allowing them to see out of the building. A handful of fires had been built inside rings of cinderblocks across the property of the gas station with two of them being particularly large and having dishes suspended over them. A few people sat near the fires, talking as they tended to the dishes which Dianne assumed were filled with food for a late lunch or early dinner.
Two entrances to the gas station—one off of the highway and the other off of the country road—were visible and a handful of people Dianne assumed were guards standing around them. Each of the guards carried a rifle of some sort and were dressed in normal street clothes, though they appeared more tattered and dirty than normal. A handful of people stood outside the country road entrance talking to the guards about something in an animated fashion.
The look of the compound had a very end-of-the-world feel to it and Dianne couldn’t help but feel reminded of Mad Max as she studied its layout and the people walking around inside. “I think we found it.” She whispered to Jason as she crouched on the hill behind a tree.
“No kidding.” Jason took off his backpack and sat down next to her before pulling two pairs of small binoculars out of his backpack. “Here.”
“Good thinking. I was just going to use the rifle scope.”
“Easy there, trigger finger. I don’t need binoculars to tell me there’s way too many people down there for us to take on alone. Besides, we don’t even know if these are the same people or not.”
“Oh they are the same people. Look off to the right side, near that big shed.” Dianne pointed and Jason swiveled his head to peer at the location. A few cars were parked near the shed at the far end of the parking lot along with a pair of large fuel trucks. One of the vehicles, a large SUV, appeared to be the same vehicle they had seen at the Carson’s house the previous day.
“Oh.” Jason whispered. “I guess we did find them.” Both he and Dianne were quiet for a few minutes as they watched the compound, studying its layout and the people inside intently.
“Hey, hey!” Dianne reached out and slapped at Jason with her left hand while watching through the binoculars. “Check out that small shack behind the building. Three people just walked out. Is that her?”
Jason turned his gaze on the location Dianne was talking about and gasped softly. “Wow. Yep. That’s Tina all right. She looks like hell, though!”
“What a pack of assholes, beating up an old lady like that.” Dianne paused for half a second and glanced at Jason. “Sorry. No offense.”
Jason chuckled. “Tina and Dave have ten years on Sarah and I. None taken.” His laugh was short-lived as he watched Tina being taken out of the small shed behind the gas station and unceremoniously lowered to the ground out next to one of the fires where food was being prepared. The pair of men that had carried her over left and one of the women tending to the fire squatted down next to Tina and appeared to be speaking to her.
“I really wish I could hear what’s going on.” Dianne sighed in frustration.
“Don’t need to hear it to know they’re doing something bad down there.”
“True enough. What do you think we should do?”
“Sit our asses right here and keep watching.”
“What about Tina?”
“We know she’s alive. She looks relatively unharmed and she’s still coherent. Look, she’s eating something right now. We can’t go off half-cocked on this. We need to gather as much information as we possibly can before we do anything.”
The sight of her friend being treated roughly in what looked like an enemy encampment boiled Dianne’s blood and made her want to take her rifle and start putting holes into every person she could see. Jason was right, though, and she knew it so she pulled out a pen and notebook from her backpack, got into a comfortable position on the grass and propped the binoculars up on her knees.
“Let the watching begin.”
Chapter 12
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Outside Colorado Springs, CO
Rick had forgotten about how small General Black’s office was until he, Jane and Dr. Evans were standing shoulder to shoulder inside of it. They had given up on trying to squeeze into the chairs across from the general and elected to remain standing instead. Across the desk General Black eyed them with a look that was a combination of suspicion and irritation.
The general glanced at his watch and shook his head. “It’s been fifteen minutes since you barged into my office demanding to tell me about a solution to the Damocles virus. All I’ve heard in the last fifteen minutes are theories about how maybe, possibly, if you can find a magical deus ex machina, then you can shut down Damocles and things will go back to normal.”
Rick looked over at Jane and Dr. Evans, then back at General Black. “General, that’s not at all what we’re saying. There are no guarantees here and this is far from a bulletproof solution even if we do find it. Dr. Evans and I have spent the last several hours working on this and—”
“Oh my.” General Black made a face of mock horror and put his hands to his cheeks. “Hours? Several of them? Well goodness gracious me, I’m so sorry I doubted you!” His look returned to one of pure annoyance. “Greater minds than the two of yours have been working on this problem since it started.”
“That’s just it, General.” Dr. Evans spoke next. “Everyone—including myself—was looking for a loophole. A way to beat this thing the easy way. There are no easy ways, General. The sooner we accept that the sooner we can start looking for a way to attack it head-on which is exactly what we want to do.”
“And you want me to give you a vehicle and enough supplies to head… where, exactly?”
“That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us, sir.” Rick pointed at a small stack of papers on General Black’s desk that they had given to him when they first came in. “That’s a summary of the information we think would be useful to have in order to locate the center where the NSA was working on Damocles before it was unleashed.”
General Black chortled as he picked up the pages and made a show of pretending to thumb through them. “What makes you think I would give you that kind of information if I even had it?”
“A sense of patriotic duty to your country?” Jane crossed her arms. “Or maybe you want to be heralded as a hero who helped save the world.”
General Black nodded upward at the ceiling and raised an eyebrow as he gave a slight smile. “There’s a mile of solid rock between the outside world and us. I am the king of this underground domain and quite happy to remain that way for the time being. I have my orders and they say for me to stay put, seal off the mountain in just under forty-eight hours and ensure that every soldier and
civilian in here is kept safe until this situation is resolved.” He leaned forward in his chair, steepling his fingers together. “That is my job. Not to save the world. Not to listen to crackpot theories. Not to do anything except for my job.”
“But General, this is crazy!” Rick shook his head. “If we don’t do something soon then Damocles will escalate things and then—”
“And if things do escalate then you’ll be relieved to know that we’ve got five years’ worth of supplies down here so you’ll be alive through whatever happens.”
“General.” Dr. Evans took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt before replacing them again. “I’m aware of a few of the particulars of this base having been—as a child—a secret admirer of the place.”
“I’m elated. What’s your point?”
“I know that this complex can’t survive a direct nuclear strike. An indirect one, sure. But a direct one? With today’s missile technology? No.”
For the first time since meeting the man Rick noticed that General Black was visibly disturbed by what he was hearing. Dr. Evans noticed it as well and pressed his advantage. “I believe that Damocles is trying to decide what to do next. Nuclear weapons may be on the table. If that’s true then we have to move right now. Otherwise if we’re too late…” Dr. Evans trailed off and shrugged.
General Black’s eyes turned to darkened slits and his chest expanded as he took in long, deep breaths. Rick could feel the general’s rage as the uniformed man stood up from his desk and pointed a long finger at the opposite side of the room. “Get out of my office.”
