Blackout b-1

by Robison Wells

  “We can’t guarantee your safety, nor can we guarantee you’ll even make it out of training and into combat. If you sign up, you’ll be treated as a soldier—a special soldier, but a soldier nonetheless. You may or may not have weapons, depending on how much time we have to train you and what role you’re assigned. You’ll be a part of a team, and not just any team. You’ll be a part of the army special forces—the Green Berets.

  “Anyone who chooses to be part of this, stand up now. This isn’t a draft. If you don’t want in, you’ll be returned to the rooms you just came from and you’ll be under guard until this war is over and we can figure out how best to treat this virus.”

  There was a long pause, and Laura realized that he was waiting.

  A boy near the front stood up, and then the guy next to him. In a moment, five more followed.

  She joined them, and even let her smile show through a tiny bit. It was exactly what she’d wanted. She was on the inside.

  A few more got to their feet. Others talked.

  After a moment, Jack stood, and then the girl beside him did as well.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  JACK KNELT ON A DARK hillside, watching the broad field in front of him. He was getting better every day, and his eyes almost felt like machines now—like he could tweak the settings, zoom, focus, adjust for lighting, filter through smoke. He was no longer Jack the high school janitor; he was Jack the human telescope, the human microphone, the human sensor.

  They were all stupid powers, really. They’d make a terrible comic book. But it was so incredible, so different. So not him.

  Beside him on the hillside was a spotter with a headset and a scope, and behind him was an officer. Somewhere in the field a sniper was approaching. The sniper was a Green Beret, among the highest-trained soldiers in the United States Army, yet Jack knew exactly where he was, had been tracking him for the better part of three hours.

  It had taken a while to find him. There was a light breeze that made all the brush sway in the desert wind, and Jack had to struggle to pick the camouflaged man out of the background. Still, he’d done it without binoculars and without night-vision goggles.

  Jack was supposed to report the sniper as soon as he saw him, but he was holding out now, just for fun. It was nearing the end of his training.

  “Anything?” the spotter beside him finally said. “Time’s almost up.”

  “Are we done?” Jack asked.

  “Only if you’ve found him,” the spotter said. “Wait. Are your eyes closed?”

  Jack smiled, and cracked open one eye to see the spotter. “Yep. But not to show off.”

  Jack opened both eyes and clambered to his feet. He was sore from crouching. He was sore from a week of training that he had been completely unprepared for.

  “This is to show off, though. Sorry.” Jack pointed across the desert. “He started somewhere near that small hill. He scooted, facedown, for a good two hundred yards in a south, southeast direction. When he reached that taller brush, he crawled on his hands and knees. He paused for several minutes—I almost thought I’d lost him; you guys are good at controlling your breathing—and then took a lateral course over to that dry creek bed. He ate something there, or maybe just started chewing gum. He also drank, probably a fourth of his canteen. Then he headed up the creek bed on his stomach for a long time, at least an hour. Then he came out, and he’s trying to get into position now to take the shot.”

  The spotter looked stunned. “You did that with your eyes closed?”

  “There was too much movement out there in the wind. Every bush and little tree looked like a strobe light each time a gust of wind shook their leaves. So, I closed my eyes and listened and smelled. Our sniper has a pretty strong deodorant, and I think he’s got moleskin on some blisters—some kind of foot ointment.”

  The officer, who had been quiet up to this point, stepped forward. “You’re not supposed to be playing games. You were supposed to identify him as soon as you saw—smelled—him.”

  “I told you when I first found him. Besides, I’m not going to get any better if you keep giving me easy tasks like ‘find the guy in the bushes.’”

  “Well, Lambda, your training is almost over. You’ve been an exemplary recruit but I’m concerned about your abilities to follow orders.”

  “It was just a—”

  “You’re impressive, Lambda,” the officer said, “but there’s a hell of a lot more to soldiering than finding enemy snipers. I’d advise you to get your head together. Start calling your commanders ‘sir’ and learn a little bit of decorum. Otherwise, you’re going to get yourself or someone else killed. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said.

  “Good. We have one final test for you. No showing off this time. It’s important.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ALEC STOOD IN A LONG line of people. At the front it was organized and single file, but the farther back it went the more it became a mob. The desert sand bit at his face, but he ignored it. After three hours of standing and shoving he was finally nearing the fence, and the steel-and-barbed-wire passage that left the quarantine zone.

  He was worried that someone would recognize him here: he’d gone through twenty-three girls in the camp, looking for cell phones and then cell phone chargers and maps and any other contraband he could talk them out of. Only four of them had anything to scrounge, and most of it was useless. Of the three phones he’d found, two worked, and just one managed to get a weak signal all the way out here.

  He’d spent the rest of his time moving from tent to tent, trying to remember the name of each girl in case he ran into her again. To make it easier on himself he’d used the same fourth-grade story each time, but there were a hundred little lies—“Oh, you went to Hawthorne Elementary?” “Yeah, I totally remember that Christmas party with the Hawaiian theme,” “Mrs. Staheli was the worst!” Alec could be caught in any of those lies, or even caught stumbling over the names: Emily, Heather, Jenny, Kara, Aubrey . . . so many of them. He was an expert at creating fictional memories, not retaining real ones.

  The line moved slowly forward, but he still couldn’t see what was going on ahead of him.

  He’d have to rejoin a group—a new group, since Laura and Dan were as good as dead. They were dead to him, anyway. Traitors. They’d abandoned him.

  He wondered, for the first time in a long time, what had happened to the Glen Canyon Dam. It had to have been a total loss. Probably not the loss of life he’d hoped for, but definitely destructive to the power supply. He wondered how Hoover Dam had fared, downstream.

  He also wondered, not for the first time, how many of his teams were still in action. In a way, Alec’s release from the quarantine today made him nervous. Did that mean the tide had turned? Had the teams been captured? Had the attacks slowed? The little news he’d been able to read on the smartphone seemed to indicate that everything was still moving according to plan. The attacks weren’t as focused as he’d prefer, but that’s because he was here and not giving orders. In that event, all teams knew they should look for targets of opportunity. Even if they were only burning down an apartment building, or knocking over power lines, they still could do major damage.

  The line moved slowly forward, and after another fifteen minutes of dry desert wind, he got to the table by the door. A soldier was seated, flanked by two more. Two guard towers looked on, thirty yards to each side.

  “Put your hand on the rectangle,” the man said, his voice monotone and dull.

  Alec placed his left hand—the one that wasn’t broken—on the mark, and the man at the table inspected Alec’s wristband.

  He consulted his paperwork, and compared his photo to Alec’s face. Then he rattled off a memorized speech without bothering to make eye contact.

  “Your test results show no manifestations of the Erebus virus. The US Army, your government, and the people of the United States thank you for your patience with this quarantine process. While we know you were severel
y inconvenienced, we hope you understand it was for your safety and the safety of your fellow Americans.”

  He snipped the bracelet off Alec’s wrist with a pair of shears, and then replaced it with another—nearly identical, but with a barcode and the word “HEALTHY” printed in capital letters.

  “You must wear this bracelet at all times,” he continued, cinching it tightly onto Alec’s arm. “If it is ever removed, you will be returned to a quarantine center and retested for the virus. Are we clear?”

  “Yes,” Alec said with a nod.

  “I see you’re heading to Denver?”

  “Yes.”

  “The bus outside will take you to the Salt Lake transfer station.”

  And with that, one of the soldiers opened the steel-framed door and let Alec outside the fence. He was on his way to Salt Lake, and from there he’d find a team. It was time to start things moving again.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIS IS IT, JACK THOUGHT. The final test. To prove if Jack could properly track someone in the real world.

  The real world. Real bad guys. Real weapons.

  Jack listened as the captain on the far side of the hangar ruffled through papers with the warrant officer.

  A door opened, and, to Jack’s surprise, Aubrey entered. A soldier pointed her to the folding chairs where Jack was sitting.

  What did she have to do with Jack’s test?

  “She’s going to be trouble,” the captain said, his voice hushed, apparently forgetting how well Jack could hear.

  “We knew that going in,” the warrant officer said. “We caught her trying to break into a military facility, for crying out loud.”

  “Her psych exam showed that she could be loyal.”

  “She’s a loose cannon. The best we can do is keep her pointed in the right direction.”

  The captain sighed and leaned on the table. “You think it’s worth it, having these Lambdas?”

  “Not my call.”

  “I asked what you think.”

  “I think they might save a few of our guys. And we just might get a couple of cheerleaders and the president of the chess club killed in the process. I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Nothing else was said. The men flipped through papers. The warrant officer unfolded a map.

  “Hey, Jack,” Aubrey said as she reached him. She grinned at the sight of him. Even in olive drab she looked good.

  “Hey. What are you here for?”

  “My ‘final test.’ How about you?”

  “Same.”

  She nodded. “They said it’d be real-world training this time. Whatever that means.”

  Aubrey looked out at the open hangar door and at the helicopters just outside. Jack wished that he could hear her thoughts. The best he could do was listen to her breathing and the calm, steady sound of her heart.

  Jack knew his heartbeat wasn’t nearly so slow.

  He wondered where they were going. The captain had said they were going into enemy territory, and it frightened Jack to think what that meant. Had an entire city been overrun? Was there a rebellion? They’d talked about that many times in training—that if they didn’t get the terrorist attacks under control they’d be facing an uprising from the people. Citizens can only live so long in fear before they stop trusting their protectors.

  Five Green Berets entered the room, and the captain pointed them toward Jack and Aubrey. He gathered his papers and followed.

  “I’m Captain Dane Rowley,” he said, looking at Jack, then Aubrey. “My men have already been briefed, and they have their maps and timetables. But for your benefit, here’s the overview. A week ago, West High School in Salt Lake City was hit in a terrorist attack. Fortunately, it was at night, and there were no casualties—”

  He seemed to say that just for Jack and Aubrey’s benefit. Jack had heard of plenty of other schools being attacked; learning there weren’t casualties here didn’t do anything to calm his nerves.

  “Salt Lake hasn’t been hit as hard as some cities, but no resources have been allocated to clean up yet. This school has turned into kind of a haven for the homeless, and there are rumors of a monster living in the basement.”

  “A monster?” Jack said, with a small laugh that, he hoped, hid his nerves.

  “Well, ‘demon’ is the term that keeps getting thrown around. The West High Demon. Obviously, this is a Lambda.”

  “A terrorist?” Aubrey asked.

  “Probably not,” he said. “If it was a member of one of these terrorist cells, it would be leaving to make attacks. According to our reports, it hasn’t moved for five days.

  “Parsons,” he continued, pointing to Aubrey. “Your mission is to go dark, enter the school, and find this demon.”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a bottle of perfume, which he tossed to Aubrey. “Flowerbomb.” He grinned. “I thought the name was appropriate.”

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Spray yourself,” he said simply. “Jack here can track you by your scent.”

  Jack exchanged a look with Aubrey. “Aren’t you going to be watching her, too?” He was a guy with a really good nose, not a Green Beret. He didn’t know what “demon” Aubrey was about to face, but he didn’t want the responsibility solely on his shoulders. There was so much that he couldn’t do.

  “The school is just outside the downtown area, and our team will be stationed around the building, watching from all sides. But you’re only a kid, and you don’t look suspicious. You are going to be outside”—he pointed to a map and tapped on a wide lawn between the gym building and the school—“in the open where we can keep a close eye on you. You’ll have a mic so you can contact us and keep us on target. Aubrey—you can probably talk to Jack after you’ve gone dark. He should be far enough away to hear you.”

  Aubrey was looking at the light pink perfume. “What am I supposed to do when I find this thing?”

  “Assess and report. Give as much information to Jack as you can, and he’ll relay it to us.”

  “Why don’t I just wear a mic?” she asked.

  “Two reasons. First, we don’t know what this thing can detect. For all we know, it can sense electronics—we’ve run into that before. Second, we’re going to have some of our team close to you—maybe even inside the school, depending on how things look. And we’re not sure how the mic will work so close to you.”

  One of the soldiers spoke up. The patch on his chest read “Jolley,” but his attitude didn’t seem to match the name. “We’re supposed to go into battle with an untested weapons system?”

  “I’m not a weapons system,” Aubrey snapped.

  Captain Rowley held up a hand. “This isn’t a battle, it’s a recon mission. In the event that we see a vulnerable target, we’ll move in. And yes, we haven’t had the time to test all of the Lambdas to the extent that we’d like. But this ‘demon’ has thwarted both the Salt Lake SWAT Team and a team from the National Guard. That’s why they called us.”

  “Is it that important?” another Green Beret—his chest patch read “Eschler”—asked. “One Lambda hiding in a school?”

  “We have initial reports of a more major action taking place tomorrow or the next day. Tonight we’re just testing out a possible strategy. We think Parsons and Cooper here can be a significant asset. But we’ve got to work together if we’re going to make this happen.”

  Eschler sneered, as though to make it clear that he had no interest in making any of this work. Jack didn’t blame him. Even though everything about her training and powers pointed that way, he’d somehow managed to miss the fact that Aubrey would be taking the lead—and that she’d be all alone. He felt an enormous weight on his chest; he was the only person who would be in contact with her. He was the one who would decide when she needed help, when it was time to call in the reinforcements and get her out of there.

  Worse, he knew that no one could contact her. They couldn’t order her out. She was relying entir
ely on Jack to make sure that the Green Berets would come when she needed them.

  The captain dug into the large plastic shopping bag, from which he pulled a stack of civilian clothes. He handed them out to Jack and Aubrey. “Go change, and then get to work on these maps. I want you to know the floor plan of this high school backward and forward before we take off.” He looked at his watch. “That gives us about an hour.”

  Unmarked cars were waiting for the team when the helicopter landed in a large parking lot in the middle of downtown, and no one wasted any time in transferring their gear to the new vehicles. Aubrey and Jack were dropped off a half mile from the school, in a dingy part of the city.

  It wasn’t too late—maybe close to eleven—but the lights were out all over Salt Lake. The tall buildings were big black holes that blocked the view of the stars, and the only flickers appeared to come from the occasional candle or flashlight. Had the terrorists knocked out the power grid?

  Aubrey followed Jack in silence as they hiked west toward the school. West High was made up of three buildings, but it was the main one—a large, three-story place that had probably been built eighty years before—that had suffered the damage. It had come tumbling down, collapsing on the north end. It looked now like the school was a sinking ship, slanted into torn-up earth. They skirted the building, as they’d been told to do, staying a block south and a block east before creeping up on it and making their way onto the lawn.

  “Well,” Aubrey said, spraying her neck and wrists with the perfume and then holding them out for Jack to smell. “Are you ready, Bloodhound?”

  The perfume was overpowering so close, and he had to focus on something else to not gag.

  “The packaging says it has freesia in it,” she said with a smile. “Do you think I smell like freesia?”