Kansas City, a city of over four hundred thousand people. Dead.
Lawrence. Nearly eighty thousand people. Dead.
Topeka. Over one hundred twenty thousand. Getting torn apart at that very moment. Dying.
Andrew knew there were five other major cities in the process of being evacuated: Omaha, Nebraska, 390,000 people; Des Moines, Iowa, nearly 200,000; St. Louis, Missouri, 350,000; Springfield, Missouri, over 150,000; Wichita, Kansas, 344,000. Combined with the surrounding towns and small communities dotting the map in the path of the things, the numbers were staggering. Well over a million of his fellow citizens, people he was sworn to protect, were in harm’s way. Over half a million might’ve died already, in the short span of less than twenty-four hours.
Andrew looked past Hugo at the SECDEF and read the same desperation in his eyes. “Tank, what’s the situation on the ground?”
“We’re placing as many troops as we can around the five major cities under threat, Mr. President, regular army and National Guard. Right now, we’re relying almost entirely on the local units for the deployments. They’re not all combat units, but they all know how to fire a rifle.” A fleeting old soldier’s smile. “We’ll be airlifting other units into the region by morning. Until then, sir, we’ll have to stop their advance by air. Air Combat Command is moving as many strike aircraft into the region as possible.” He stole a quick glance at his watch. “The first B-52 strike out of Barksdale should occur in about thirty minutes, directed against the wave heading toward Omaha. Similar strikes are planned against the five additional waves. Tactical aircraft are hitting them as we speak.”
“Impact?” Tell me something good, Tank.
“Negligible, Mr. President. Hardly any impact at all.” The SECDEF lowered his eyes, too full of the bitterness of failure to hold the gaze of his commander in chief.
“How can that be?”
Tank looked up again. “Sir, you saw our reports from Kansas City International. They blew right through the troops we had on the ground, and the air attacks had almost no effect. Until we bring more firepower to bear . . .”
“Okay, Tank. You’re doing all you can. I understand that.” The president looked up at the digital clock on the wall of the situation room. It was half past two in the morning. “I want details after the BUFF strikes.” The B-52 was officially named the Stratofortress, but was more commonly known as the BUFF, which stood for Big Ugly Fat Fellow. Or Fucker, depending on who was asking. “I need to know if we’re going to be able to stop them with conventionals.”
“Understood, sir.” Tank knew what the next step could be if conventional weapons failed, a scenario he wouldn’t allow himself to ponder. Not yet.
“How long until they enter Omaha?”
“We estimate less than three hours, sir,” Tank said. “Unless we can stop them, that is.”
Less than three hours, the president thought. Right before sunrise. “Hugo, keep me updated on the evacuations. Keep pressing.”
“Will do, sir.”
Andrew leaned back in his chair, looking at the myriad of charts and displays arrayed in front of him. No president before him had ever watched the nation dying right before his eyes.
For the first time, Andrew began to wonder if this nightmare might require a nightmare solution.
CHAPTER 21
The heavy, choking stench of aviation fuel was nearly overpowering.
Garrett knew the fact that the chopper hadn’t exploded on impact was a miracle. The tink tink of hot metal, though, meant there could still be an explosion at any moment. He’d have to move fast.
The wrecked Chinook was resting on its side, the rotor blades completely shredded and lying in pieces around the crash site. As Garrett moved toward the rear of the chopper, stepping over shards of carbon fiber rotor sticking out of the ground like husks from a blackened crop, he heard no moaning, no cries for help. Just the tinking sound of hot metal cooling in the evening air.
He shined his flashlight into the open rear of the chopper and was horrified at the scene the light revealed. The walls of the cargo compartment were covered in blood. Motionless bodies littered the interior. He could smell the blood, thick and coppery, mixed with the sickening stench of bile, the same haunting scent of a smoldering battlefield, an odor not easily forgotten by those who’d experienced the full brutality and violent aftermath of close combat. It was a smell he knew all too well, one he hoped he’d someday forget. “Is anyone alive?” he shouted, not expecting an answer.
He got none.
Garrett hurriedly checked each body for signs of life, knowing he was only going through the motions, but also knowing he couldn’t leave without making sure. He owed them at least that much.
All dead.
From the look of the injuries, he figured the Chinook had hit the ground extremely hard. He’d seen the aftermath of aircraft crashes before, but none had been quite this bad; a couple of the bodies were twisted and mangled, missing arms and legs. The human body was incredibly resilient, but typically didn’t fare too well when slammed into an immoveable object—like the ground. Inertia could be a real bitch when it came to flesh and bone.
Among the bloodied camouflage uniforms of the dead soldiers, he noticed civilian clothes. Kneeling to look closely at one of the civilian bodies, Garrett’s eyes clouded with recognition as he shone his light into a dead face. He knew this man, but would sadly never know his name. One of the team members from the C-130. He quickly accounted for three civilians, but there’d been five, hadn’t there? Yes, definitely five, including the brunette Marilyn Monroe. Carolyn, that was her name. Legs. Carolyn Ridenour. None of the bodies here were female, though. Another chopper, he hoped silently, she must’ve made it out on another chopper. The woman and her team didn’t need to be at the airport in the first place, as it turned out, and now three of them lay dead in a wrecked chopper. Crappy luck, that was.
He felt a pang of guilt for treating her so gruffly on the tarmac, but he let it go. He had to. She was probably dead, like the rest. Just like his soldiers. And there’d been hundreds of them, many of whom he knew. He didn’t know her from Eve. Never would.
Let it go.
Garrett stood and swung his light toward the cockpit. The entrance was too mangled to pass through, so he ran out the back of the Chinook and around to the front to check the flight crew. He discovered smashed cockpit windows and both pilots—obviously dead—hanging partway out of the twisted, crushed cockpit, along with, his light revealed, something else.
In an instant, he understood.
The horrific injuries he’d seen weren’t all caused by the crash.
They’d been killed by the hideous thing that now lay broken and twisted beside the dead flight crew. When he shined his flashlight across the creature’s mangled body, dead eyes glowed back at him as the beam entered through dilated pupils. Its mouth was wide, revealing rows of black, knife-edged teeth. A long, thin arm dangled at an odd angle in front of it, long claws spread wide, covered in bloody, dripping gore.
It was the same kind of beast he’d seen at the airport. The same kind he’d blasted from the Kiowa’s skid as they lifted off. A monster. Something that couldn’t possibly exist, yet it was there in front of him, as real as the ground beneath his boots, muted yellow discs staring at him. Mocking him.
Garrett shifted his light away from the thing’s body. He’d seen enough. There were no survivors here. Most of the passengers—and most likely the crew, he knew—had died before the crash, killed by the thing hanging out of the cockpit. He turned to run back to the Kiowa—and saw the mass of glowing eyes in the distance. Racing across the darkened fields. Thousands of them. Small, yellow lights, bouncing and weaving, heading his way. And fast.
He heard the Kiowa’s engine spooling up—the pilot had seen them, too. As Garrett watched the eyes bouncing in the darkness, he noticed something different.
No chattering, no clicking sounds like he’d heard at the airport. The little bastards were moving quietly.
As he ran, Garrett judged the distance to the chopper. He knew he’d make it in time, but not by much. He fell to the ground, cursing himself for tripping over something in the dark. As he scrambled to his knees and spat dirt from his mouth, he knew now was definitely not the time to pull a goddamned Jamie Lee Curtis.
The eyes were close. So unbearably close.
He quickly got back to his feet and realized what he’d tripped over had felt soft. Like a body. He aimed his flashlight toward where he’d stumbled and saw the motionless body of Carolyn Ridenour, lying on her side. He knelt by her. “Ms. Ridenour? Carolyn!” He felt for her pulse . . . and found one. At least she’s still alive, he thought, and flung her over his shoulder.
As he ran toward the Kiowa, he heard a moaning, an eerie, low sound, barely audible over the sound of the Kiowa’s rotor noise. At first he thought it was Carolyn, but then he realized the sound was coming from a distance. From where he’d seen the things approaching.
The chattering and clicking suddenly erupted like thunder, and he knew he’d been spotted. He glanced over his shoulder, trying hard not to lose his balance as he ran with the added weight, and confirmed what he thought. They were coming right for him.
Garrett saw the Kiowa’s pilot reach over and open the right-hand cockpit door as they approached, frantically waving at him to hurry.
The noise behind him was getting louder. With each step, he could feel the ground vibrating beneath his feet.
He knew the things were right behind him.
He threw Carolyn’s body into his seat and climbed on top of her, cramming himself into the small cockpit just as the landing skids lifted off the ground. The chopper tilted forward as the rotor blades grabbed at the air, like spinning hands desperately grasping for purchase, and lifted off and away from the mass of creatures streaming toward them.
A set of long, sharp claws scraped the bottom of the Kiowa as it rose into the night sky, a thing barely missing a handhold as it leapt at the chopper.
Garrett held tightly to the unconscious woman huddled beneath his body.
He knew it had been close.
Too close.
As the thwap thwap thwap of the Kiowa receded into the distance, the chattering and clicking ceased. All that could be heard was the muffled thunder of thousands of ravenous beasts heading north across the farm fields of eastern Kansas.
The same sound could be heard from five other masses, as they raced across the trembling American heartland.
CHAPTER 22
The full evacuation of the Omaha area was under way, but it wasn’t going well. Traffic to the north on I-29 and west on I-80 was at a complete standstill—both highways were filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic as the city’s residents desperately attempted to flee what was approaching from the southeast. The situation only worsened as more and more people tried to take alternate routes out of the city, clogging the narrow roads and state highways with hundreds of vehicles.
People were panicky—they all knew what had happened in Kansas City. Cars full of families and whatever belongings they could grab lined the roads, each driver terrified they wouldn’t make it out in time. Some were still in their pajamas. Accidents were inevitable. From the air, an unbroken string of taillights stretched to the horizon.
The same scene was unfolding in St. Louis. In Des Moines. Wichita. Springfield.
To the south of Omaha, a line of defense was quickly forming, composed of USAF security forces from Offutt Air Force Base and Army National Guard units from the surrounding area. They were lightly armed.
The Offutt AFB flight line was filling with strike aircraft, stopping to refuel and rearm. A-10s and F-16s thundered into the sky, heading south.
As they approached the base, Garrett watched the long blue tail of an F-16’s afterburner rocket by him as the Viper screamed south, a pair of cluster bombs slung beneath its wings.
As the Kiowa settled on the ramp at Offutt AFB, the first bright flashes from a B-52 strike lit the southern horizon. A line of six of the mighty BUFFs from Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, were puking their heavy loads of high-explosive iron bombs from their fat bellies and wing pylons, shaking the ground with a thunderous roar that rolled across the cornfields like a massive earthquake.
As the first B-52 turned back toward Barksdale, the second bomber in line dropped its load of forty 500-pound general-purpose bombs. The remaining four BUFFs lumbered through the air, awaiting their turn on the bombing run, their turn to add to the fiery maelstrom erupting below. The press liked to call it “carpet bombing.” To those who flew the old warhorses, it was called the “elephant walk”—one bomber after another, flying single-file in the sky, dropping their war loads.
For the first time in history, the oldest and mightiest symbol of American airpower was tearing into an enemy on American soil. It was a sobering sight.
As Garrett carried Carolyn across the ramp toward a waiting Humvee, all he could hear was the rumble from the B-52 strikes, the bomb blasts lighting the sky with an eerie orange glow.
He couldn’t hear the sound of thousands of claws tearing into the soil, digging, digging. As the high explosives from the BUFFs blew hundreds of them to shreds with each detonation, the wave stopped in place.
A low moaning sound escaped from the open maws of the upright things, barely audible over the bombing’s lionlike roar. Giving orders.
Soil flew through the air as each of the things tore into the ground with such ferocity, such urgency, that in a matter of minutes most had disappeared from view. They continued to dig, even as the 500-pound bombs continued dropping among them and unearthing hundreds with each earth-trembling blast, throwing their torn bodies high into the air and scattering pieces all over the once-peaceful farmland. Those that avoided the bombs continued to dig until they were far belowground, safe from the aerial onslaught being unleashed against them.
But they weren’t trying to escape the bombardment. It was time.
To burrow.
To rest.
And more importantly, it was time to multiply.
At that same instant, the five other waves of creatures stopped in place and started to dig as well. A biological clock in the restructured brains of each of the things had hit an internal stop—the urgency to feed was replaced by an urgency to get underground, to hide. To prepare for the changes to come.
The high-altitude grumble from the B-52s’ engines receded into the distance as they left their target area to recover at Barksdale.
When the sun broke the horizon announcing a new day, the American heartland was quiet once again.
Quiet as a tomb.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER 23
“Mr. President?”
Andrew lifted his head, surprised he’d actually dozed off for a few minutes. He quickly glanced at his watch, and found his few minutes had in fact lasted more than an hour. Jessie Hruska was standing by his desk, her hand resting on his shoulder.
“Sir, General Smythe is on the line from the NMCC. He has some new information.”
Andrew reached for his secure phone, which had a direct connection to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. “Yes, General?”
“Mr. President, we’ve had a new development.”
“Go on.”
“Sir, the things have disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“They’re gone, sir. None of our monitoring equipment is picking them up. No infrared signatures, no ground radar contacts, no visual sightings. We think they may have gone underground.”
“When did this happen?”
“About forty-five minutes ago, sir. The first B-52 strike was hitting them outside of Omaha and—”
“Forty-five minutes ago? Why wasn’t I notifi
ed immediately?” He flashed an angry glance at his national security advisor, which he instantly regretted. He’d been awake for over twenty hours straight. Allison had noticed the fatigue in his voice, and called him on it. Now was not the time for the president of the United States to be asleep on his feet, she’d said, and as usual, she was right. Fifteen-minute catnaps could do wonders.
Jessie must’ve made sure he wasn’t disturbed once he dozed off. She’d only woken him when it was absolutely necessary to do so.
The general was fumbling for words on the other end of the line. “Uh, sir, we weren’t exactly sure what we were seeing. I wanted solid info before—”
“Okay, General. I understand.” He looked apologetically at Jessie, and she smiled back. For just an instant, as he looked into her eyes, he allowed himself to feel a moment of affection for her. It was something he’d tried to avoid, tried to ignore, but it was getting more and more difficult.
Ever since the death of his wife over two years ago, he’d completely buried his whole being in the demands of the job—in part to deal with his loss, and in part to shield himself from those around him. A president, no matter what happened in his personal life, had to remain strong, especially in a time of war. Showing weakness, even when faced with the loss of someone so dear to him, was simply not an option. He had mourned, and the nation had mourned with him. But it had only been for a short time. No matter how much it hurt, he felt he had to put it behind him and move forward as quickly as possible, for the sake of his country.
As the months dragged on and he continued to bury his pain underneath the events of the day, it became less and less prevalent, even in the few quiet moments he was able to grab over the course of his grueling daily schedule. He thought of his wife less and less, which at times caused an incredible guilt to sweep over him.
After a year had passed, however, he began to feel a connection with his national security advisor. It was a connection that had grown stronger with each passing day. They’d worked side by side continuously during his administration, and there was rarely a day that went by when they weren’t together in some capacity. Andrew knew, deep down, that Jessie Hruska cared for him. She was an incredible woman—strong, capable, and unafraid. She’d been a superb source of guidance and counsel to him and had helped direct the course of the nation in this time of war. More importantly, she’d been a source of comfort for him, especially after his wife had died. There had been many little moments like this, when she’d openly shown her compassion for him. He was finding it extremely difficult to keep his relationship with her on a strictly professional level.
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